Bronze Plaque with a Gorgon Head
Unknown · Archaic period, seventh century BC
A small rectangle of thin bronze sheet, twelve centimetres high, hammered up from the back so that a face stands out in relief. The features are the wide, staring, grimacing face that the Greeks called a gorgoneion, the head of the Gorgon, worked with the repoussé technique and finished with incised lines for the details. Two holes are pierced in each corner for fixing the plaque to a support, and the lower left corner has broken away. The surface has the green patina of ancient bronze, and the modelling, though simple, has the bold, frontal force of Archaic art.
The plaque was found at the Kabirion near Thebes in Boeotia, the sanctuary of the Kabiroi, mysterious gods honoured with initiation rites and known for the strange, comic pottery found there. It was made in Boeotia in the seventh century BC, when Greek artists were taking the Gorgon's face from the eastern monsters they saw on imported objects and turning it into a protective sign against evil. Nailed to a wooden object or a piece of furniture offered in the sanctuary, it served that purpose. The Louvre purchased it in January eighteen ninety.
Did You Know? The two holes in each corner show the plaque was nailed onto something, most likely a wooden object dedicated in the sanctuary.
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