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Macedonian Metalworking - Petros G. Themelis
Macedonian Metalworking - Petros G. Themelis
Petros G. Themelis
MACEDONIAN METALWORKING
broad coarse nose, and even in the shape of the lips with
the slightly undulating groove of the mouth, as well as the
severity of the expression.
Andronicos, in his overall assessment of the
stylistic tendency represented by the female head on the
bronze oinochoe from Vergina, notes that the head of
Medusa ... still retains the chunky solid shape of the
classical tradition not yet overturned by the exuberance of
the new age.95 The toreutic artist of workshop C does
indeed seem to represent the classical tendency of the
transitional period of the late fourth-early third century
BC, a tendency nevertheless contemporary and parallel to
the modernizing one followed by the toreutic artists of
workshop A at Pydna, as well as to the conservative-
archaistic one represented by the artist of workshop B at
Lete.96
The artist of krater B1 appears as
representative par excellence of the classical tendency.97
The stylistic relationship between this krater and the
earlier bronze krater in Berlin,98 which is ascribed to a
104 . M, I
. , Thessaloniki 1956, 3, 9
and 21; 1979, op. cit., 120-128.
105 See B.S. Ridgeway, Hellenistic Sculpture I. The style
of ca. 331-200 B.C., Bristol 1990, 354, who notes
concerning the statuette of Aphrodite from Eretria -- which
I happened to have found in a deposit of the 3rd-4th c. AD
--, that it is dated to the 4th c. BC (by whom?), whereas
it is Hellenistic (whoever said otherwise?). Furthermore,
she rather oddly cites LIMC and not the original
publication Prakt 1978, 26 and Prakt 1982, 179, in which
the work is dated to the 2nd c. BC and not to the 4th.
106 Whose period of artistic activity is dated between 320
and 370 BC: see D. Harris, Nikokrates of Kolonos,
Metalworker, Hesperia 57 (1988), 329-337.
34
FIGURES
Fig. 1a-b. Squatting male figure, from Edessa (Boston
0.17477).
Fig. 2a-b. Herakles with bow, from the Amphipolis area
(Boston 98.657).
Fig. 3. Trefoil-mouth oinochoe, from Drosia Edessa.
Fig. 4a-b. Octadrachms of the Edonians and Bisaltians.
Fig. 5. Silver stater of Lete.