Mirror with a Handle in the Form of a Herakles Knot (c. 280–400 CE): Art, History and Details

Mirror with a Handle in the Form of a Herakles Knot (c. 280–400 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This type of mirror was introduced throughout the Roman Empire by the 2nd century and remained popular into the 3rd and 4th centuries. Similar examples have been found in Germany and Britain. The handle is made of two thick pieces of silver wire, intertwined to form a Herakles knot--a knot so complex that only someone as strong as Herakles could break it. In antiquity, knots of various kinds were believed to provide protection from harm.

Object facts

• Title: Mirror with a Handle in the Form of a Herakles Knot
• Date: c. 280–400 CE
• Culture: Byzantium, Syria(?), Byzantine period
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: silver
• Dimensions: Diameter: 2.3 x 34.6 cm (7/8 x 13 5/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Byzantine
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1956.31

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Maguire, Eunice Dauterman, Henry Maguire, and Maggie J. Duncan-Flowers. Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House. Urbana: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989. p. 194.
• Lerner, Judith. "Horizontal-Handled Mirrors: East and West." Metropolitan Museum Journal, Volume 31(The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996). pp. 11-40.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.