Princeton Weekly Bulletin September 21, 1998
Art Museum displays Clazomenian coffin
By Sally Freedman
It's big,
and it's beautiful. But what is it?
According to Michael Padgett, Art Museum curator of ancient art, it's the rim of a Clazomenian terracotta sarcophagus, reconstructed from "more than 100 fragments, ranging from large heavy chunks to pieces as small as a quarter." (According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Clazomenae was an ancient Ionian Greek city, located about 20 miles west of Izmir (Smyrna) in modern Turkey. Founded on the mainland near the base of the Erythraean peninsula, it became part of the Ionian Dodecapolis and was well known for its painted terracotta sarcophagi of the 6th century B.C.")
This particular sarcophagus rim has belonged to the Art Museum since 1990, when it was purchased (unreconstructed) from a dealer. For the following several years, the museum cast about for ways to finance the necessary conservation work. "We tried for three grants," notes Padgett, "but were unsuccessful. Finally, a generous alumnus, Lloyd Cotsen '50, provided the funding."
The conservation work was entrusted to Meg Kraft of Art Conservation and Technical Services in Baltimore, who with her assistant Nicole Miller spent two years on the painstaking process of cleaning and preserving each fragment and recreating missing parts before piecing together the gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Current principles of conservation call for restoring works of art in such a way that the modern viewer can visualize the piece as it originally looked but still clearly distinguish original segments from restored ones. And "This is really a first class restoration job," Padgett says.
The
sarcophagus rim was finally ready for installation on August 24,
when it took some 15 people -- half a dozen staff members of the
Art Museum, the conservator and her assistant, and half a dozen
riggers with technical museum expertisethe better part of a day
and most of an evening to mount and position the 1,700-pound
artifact in Ancient Art Galleries on the lower level of the
museum.
And there it stands, ready for inspection. When in use, the rim would been horizontal, attached to a bathtub-shaped coffin, with a cover in the central lozenge concealing the ancient body. "We have a few pieces of the coffin, but not enough to make a meaningful reconstruction," says Padgett. "We have no pieces of the cover, which might have been plain or decorated or just made of roofing tiles."
Though he cannot hazard a guess at who or even what manner of person was buried inside, Padgett can date the rim on stylistic grounds to approximately 480 B.C. "a very late example" of the type.
"You can see similar sarcophagi in the Metropolitan Museum and in Boston's Fine Arts Museum," he notes, "but most of them are smaller. This one is particularly interesting for the technique."
The bottom registers, Padgett points out, were painted white and the background blacked in to depict pale griffins positioned above a wild sow between a leopard and a lion. Along the sides, the braided "guilloche" pattern is painted in black on white. At the top, several damaged registers delineate dark figures against a white-painted background (the figures, Padgett believes, were supposed to be black but came out red because the terracotta was fired unevenly).
The registers of reddish figures show chariots with winged goddesses and fighting warriors with shields; Greeks and Persians restraining horses; racing chariots; and a boar hunt, with a pair of duelling warriors on either side above a fallen warrior. "We can reconstruct some of the missing details from other sarcophagi," says Padgett. He notes that "This sarcophagus was obviously made after the Persians had conquered mainland Greek cities of Asia Minorthat is, it was made in a Greek town under Persian hegemony."
Padgett concludes his description by noting the "labyrinthine meander with stars in interstices" all around the rim. "Altogether," he declares, "this is a deluxe and elaborate artifact, sure to be a springboard for discussion of the Eastern Greeks."
Padgett himself will give a gallery talk on "Ionia and the Art of the Eastern Greeks" in the Art Museum at 12:30 pm. on October 2 and 3:00 p.m. on October 4.