Box Mirror with Head of Athena (disk) (330–270 BCE): Art, History and Details

Box Mirror with Head of Athena (disk) (330–270 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The ancient Greek box mirror resembles a modern, hinged makeup compact in design. While the actual mirror is the top of the bottom half of the box—a highly polished cast-bronze disk—the cover often bears relief decoration. This example features a helmeted head of Athena, a virgin war goddess not typically associated with implements of beauty. Several other aspects suggest that this Athena may have been repurposed from another object in antiquity: the striking difference in patina between relief and case; the irregular (noncircular) shape; and the method of attachment, with rivets through the relief rather than solder.

Object facts

• Title: Box Mirror with Head of Athena (disk)
• Date: 330–270 BCE
• Culture: Greece, Hellenistic period
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze, partially gilt
• Dimensions: Diameter: 11.3 cm (4 7/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1972.66.b

A detail from the museum

Although now green rather than golden in color, this bronze disk was once polished to a reflective sheen.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.