Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Sphinxes in Three Dimensions

Anonymous Italian Maker
Sphinx
18th century
jasper cameo on quartz
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Roman Empire
Sarcophagus fragment with Sphinx
ca. AD 200
marble relief
British Museum

Palissy ware
Salt Cellar with Sphinxes
ca. 1560-1600
lead-glazed earthenware
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Hellenistic Egypt
Recumbent Sphinx Figurine on a Stepped Platform
ca. 323-30 BC
bronze
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Niccolò Amastini
Oedipus and the Sphinx
ca. 1800-1820
sardonyx cameo
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Doccia Manufactory, Florence
Sweetmeat Dish with Sphinx
ca. 1750-60
porcelain
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

from Lilith

What night is this, made denser, in his breast
or round him, suddenly or first confest
after its gradual thickening complete?
as tho' the mighty current, bearing fleet
the unresting stars, had here devolved its lees,
stagnant, contempt, on recreant destinies;
as tho' a settling of tremendous pens,
above the desolate dream, had shed immense
addition to the incumbence of despair
downward, across the crypt of stirless air,
from some henceforth infrangible altitude,
upon his breast, that knows no dawn renew'd,
builded enormously, each brazen stage,
with rigor of his hope in hopeless age
mummied, and look that turns his thew to stone:
even hers, that is his strangling sphinx, made known
with, on her breast, his fore-erected tomb,
engraven deep, the letters of his doom.

– Christopher John Brennan (1898)

Ancient Greece
Sphinx Finial from Grave Stele
ca. 375-350 BC
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ancient Greece
Sphinx atop Capital from Grave Shaft
ca. 580-575 BC
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ancient Greek culture in South Italy
Sphinx seated on Aeolic Capital
ca. 480-460 BC
terracotta
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Anonymous French Maker
Winged Sphinx
ca. 1790-1800
giltwood
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian Maker
Pair of Sphinxes
ca. 1560
bronze
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Ancient Greece
Pinax Fragment with Sphinx facing Griffin
ca, 600-570 BC
terracotta relief
Harvard Art Museums

Ancient Greece
Kylix with Sphinxes (detail)
ca. 550-540 BC
painted terracotta
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian Maker
Two Sphinxes
16th century
agate cameo
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Anonymous Italian Maker
Pendant with Sphinx
ca. 1600
baroque pearls and jewels set in enameled gold
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam