Details

LOT 0311

Scythian Bronze Zoomorphic Openwork Horse Chamfron

4TH CENTURY B.C.

15 1/2 in. (283 grams, 39.5 cm).

The edges formed of opposed curving serpent heads, each pair flanking a central zoomorphic head, possibly representing a horse or a beast; the animals with incised detailing to their bodies and heads; a large horse(?) head to the lower edge with its muzzle forming the point of the chamfron; two loops to the reverse.

Provenance

From the Gorovits family collection, since at least the 1940s.
Private collection, London.

Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D’Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate number no. 17178-221462.

Literature

Cf. similar elements in Melyukova, A.I., Stepi evropeĭskoy chasti SSSR v skifo-sarmatskoe vremya (Steppes of the European part of the USSR in the Scythian-Sarmatian Period, in Russian), Moscow, 1989; Leskov, A.M., Grabschätze der Adygeen, Munich, 1990; Galanina, L.K., Die Kurgane von Kelermes:“Königsgräber” der frühskythischen Zeit, Moscow, 1997; Kantorovich, A.R., Erlich, V.R., Bronze Molding Art from Adygeian Kurgans, VIII-III centuries B.C., Moscow, 2006, cat.103,105,122; Galanina, L.K., ‘Horse equipment from the collection of Elizabethan antiquities stored in the State Hermitage (excavations of N.I. Veselovsky in years 1914, 1915, 1917, in Russian)’ in АСГЭ. Вып.38. Санкт-Петербург: Государственный Эрмитаж, Saint Petersburg, 2010, pp.107-122.

Footnotes

Bronze open-worked frontlets like this one were found with horses in the Barrow-mound no.5 of the Ulyap burial-ground in the Kuban basin, and their secure dating to the 4th century B.C. was established by the Thasian amphoras found in the respective graves (nn. 14-15-21, see Leskov, 1990, figs.180,183). The incised decoration of the chamfron finds various parallels both on frontlets from Barrow-Mounds nos. 4/1913 and 4/1917 near Elizavetinskaya Kossack-Village, in Kuban Basin, and from Gyuenos in Abkhazia (Galanina, 2010, pl.7,12). The piece belongs to a rare type of chamfron, known only from finds in the Scythian and Meotian burials of 5th-4th centuries B.C.