Plaque with a Woman

Catalogue Number	26
Inventory Number	78.AD.294.1
Typology	Plaque
Location	Taranto region
Dimensions	H: 16.4 cm; W: 5.9 cm

Light orange in color (Munsell 7.5 yr 8/6), purified, with reflective inclusions, white slip over the entire surface of the front. Polychromy: red (base), traces of black (hair, chiton, phiale). Suspension hole.

Reassembled from two fragments; polychromy and slip are worn away.

– by 1978, Bruce McNall (Encino, CA), donated to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1978.

Unpublished.

The female figure is shown frontally, standing on a curving base marked at the upper and lower edges by a fillet in relief and decorated by a pair of horizontal red lines. She places her weight on the left leg, while the right leg is bent. The right arm hangs straight down the figure’s side and is gathering folds of drapery in her hand; the left arm, by contrast, is raised, and the left hand, beneath which a broad hem of himation hangs vertically, holds up a patera. She wears a chiton gathered by a belt beneath the breasts, and a himation drapes down in broad transverse folds on the left side. The face is oval and elongated, and the facial features are expressed sketchily; the hair is parted over the forehead and gathered up. The statuette, made from a worn mold, must originally have been painted with bright colors.¹

The relief could depict Polyboia, sister of Hyakinthos. She is a character of uncertain origin, generally portrayed with attributes such as a cornucopia, lyre, flabellum, pyxis, grape cluster, swan, rooster, or phiale mesomphalos, a bowl used in rituals.²

Such reliefs with a female figure or an ephebic figure are widespread in Tarentine coroplastic production, especially between the end of the fourth century and the third century BC.³

A number of myths, like that of Polyboia, entail couples involved in death and apotheosis; the story of her death as a virgin and ascension to heaven links her to the host of mythological figures whose existential condition is closely connected with the cycle of the seasons. Certain sources associate Polyboia to chthonic deities like Kore, with whom she shares the state of virginity and the specific attributes of the Underworld.⁴

The cult of Hyakinthos, an ancient pre-Dorian deity closely affiliated with Apollo, had its chief center at Amykles in Laconia. Pausanias described the renowned funerary monument there in Hyakinthos’s honor, and it was where the hyakinthia—among the most important festivals of the region—were held. The cult of Hyakinthos, which inherited a number of iconographic attributes from that of Apollo, enjoyed great popularity in the Laconian colony of Taras where, according to Polybius’s account of Hannibal’s taking of the city, a taphos extra moenia (a funerary monument placed outside the city walls) allegedly stood, though its location remains in doubt.⁵ Likewise, we must assume, despite the absence of written evidence, that the hyakinthia must have taken place in Taras with methods and rituals similar to those in Sparta. These rites probably also included elements typical of the Dionysian cult, such as the ivy wreath present in the ephebic and female examples referring to the divine couple. The extensive presence in Taras of this type of relief after the second half of the fourth century BC is documented by the material found in the excavations of Castelsaraceno, of the Via Peluso, and of Masseria del Carmine and in the votive deposits of the Via Leonida.⁶ It seems likely that unforeseen political developments, such as a request of military aid from Sparta, made it necessary to reinforce diplomatic relations between the two regions, in order to reaffirm their common origins through the revival of specific cults.⁷

A Tarentine findspot is nearly certain, though in the absence of objective data, it is not possible to assign the relief to a more specific cult context.⁸

Notes