Mule-Head Attachment for a Couch (200–100 BCE): Art, History and Details

Mule-Head Attachment for a Couch (200–100 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This bronze attachment in the shape of a mule’s head was once part of a fulcrum (armrest) for a banqueting couch. The mule’s mane flies upward, its mouth open and its ears pushed back against its head. The mule wears an ivy garland and a saddlecloth made from panther skin, two elements associated with the wine god Dionysos.

Object facts

• Title: Mule-Head Attachment for a Couch
• Date: 200–100 BCE
• Culture: Greece, Hellenistic period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 20.4 x 18.3 cm (8 1/16 x 7 3/16 in.); with base: 25.4 cm (10 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1943.68

A detail from the museum

The pattern on the panther skin, called a meander, was also extremely popular on Greek pottery.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wunderlich, Silvia A. "A Bronze Mule's Head." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 30, no. 9 (1943).
• Hollis, Howard. "A Bronze Mule's Head." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 30, no. 9 (November 1943): 137-139
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.