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

Box Mirror with Head of Athena (lid) (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 (non-circular) shape; and the method of attachment, with rivets through the relief rather than solder.

Object facts

• Title: Box Mirror with Head of Athena (lid)
• 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.a

A detail from the museum

The head of Athena on this mirror likely came from a different ancient object.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991.

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.