Mirror with Engraved Scene: Two Female Figures (330–300 BCE): Art, History and Details

Mirror with Engraved Scene: Two Female Figures (330–300 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Cast in one piece, this bronze mirror features a handle terminating in a stylized deer head. The front side of the disc, once highly polished and reflective, would have served as a mirror, while the reverse—now on display—features an engraved figural scene. Best observed with the aid of a line drawing, this shows two standing women, both draped and looking at one another. Without inscriptions, their identities remain uncertain, but the crescent overhead and the upright spear held by the righthand figure suggest that they may be the goddesses Artumes (Artemis) and Menerfa (Athena).

Object facts

• Title: Mirror with Engraved Scene: Two Female Figures
• Date: 330–300 BCE
• Culture: Etruscan
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 36 cm (14 3/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Etruscan
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1916.2012

A detail from the museum

The piriform shape of this mirror suggests that it was produced in Praeneste (modern Palestrina).

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• De Puma, Richard Daniel. "A Fourth Century Praenestine Mirror with Telephos and Orestes." Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts Roemische Abteilung 87 (1980): 5-28.
• De Puma, Richard Daniel. "A Fourth Century Praenestine Mirror with Telephos and Orestes." Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts Roemische Abteilung 87 (1980): 5-28.
• De Puma, Richard Daniel. "Greek Myths on Three Etruscan Mirrors in Cleveland." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 7 (1983): 290-302.

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.