Journal - Comune di Monteleone di Spoleto

it appears that the tusks of the boar protome at the base
of the pole were also replaced, given that the current tusks
(cat. 2d) are disproportionately large for the animal’s head.
if, as i maintain, the protome was made by the master craftsman,
it seems unlikely that he failed to check the finished
work of the artisan who crafted the ivory. (and quite apart
from any consideration of the aesthetic character of the
chariot, the tusks are hippopotamus ivory, not elephant ivory,
which was what was used for many of the chariot’s original
inlays.) The tusks may have been replaced when the revetment
of the protome was removed (and the underside cut)
in connection with a change of draft horses: the new horses
may have been taller and thus required changes to the angle
of the pole (see cat. 16). The substitution of horses would
have depended on factors we cannot identify, and the possibility
cannot be ruled out that the chariot outlived the horses.
So when and why was the chariot completely refurbished?
The simplest answer to both questions would be
when it was placed in the tomb for the burial ceremony.
none the less, the possibility exists that the person who commissioned
the chariot was not the person buried in the tomb
with it (see iii.F). i believe that this exceptional parade chariot
was initially owned by the person who commissioned it,
who used it for a long time in a major urban center, and that
it later became the property of a powerful village chieftain
in the upper Sabina who controlled the trade routes through
the apennine valleys. The change of ownership may have
occasioned a refurbishing of the chariot.
E. Observations on iconography and style
The most cohesive and well-documented examinations of
the iconographic, stylistic, and antiquarian aspects of the
figures on the chariot were provided by ursula Höckmann
and marisa Bonamici in 1982 and 1997, respectively. 68
Their research has been fundamental to my synthesis of previous
investigations and the modifications i introduce here.
The iconography of the front panel is based on an ionian
prototype that has an antecedent in the amphora from delos
in the archaeological museum in mykonos. The vase, sometimes
thought to be of melian or Cycladic origin, is dated
before the end of the seventh century B.C. 69 The scenes on
the amphora and the chariot share the same model. Charles
dugas compared the symmetrical composition of the chariot’s
figures with the paintings on a clay plate found at
delos. 70 in his opinion, the potter’s source was probably
high-quality ionian bronze works, something like a pair of
Cretan shields, or, even better, the monteleone chariot. 71
The similarity between the chariot’s front panel and this
exceptional clay plate further supports the hypothesis that
our artist working in the first half of sixth century B.C. was
of ionian extraction. another melian amphora, said to show
apollo, provides a prototype for a series of representations
of two warriors fighting over the body of a third that includes
the scene with achilles and memnon dueling over
antilochus’s body on the proper right panel of the chariot. 72
The scene on the chariot seems somewhat static compared
to the well-known euphorbus plate from rhodes, which is
datable to about 600 B.C. and shows menelaus and Hector
fighting over the fallen euphorbus. 73 it is difficult to say
whether the competence of the craftsman or the shape of
the bronze panel is responsible. The same scene depicted
later on one of the loeb tripods is slightly more dynamic
because the trapezoidal shape of the picture field allowed
the artist to show the movement of the legs. 74
no counterpart is known for the composition of the
entire scene depicting achilles on the chariot, but the team
of horses and the woman have parallels on the slightly later
silver sheet (from a chariot?) overlaid with electrum from
Castel San mariano. 75 The strikingly ionian features of the
sheet suggest the same iconographic source for the two
works, perhaps a more complex scene from which individual
elements were derived and recombined. many years
before the recent restoration, i had noticed the similarity
between the group of the boar charging a deer on the front
of the chariot and the famous pair of gold revetments from
delphi published by Pierre amandry. 76 The revetments
include the motifs of a lion carrying on its back a kid(?), a
young deer (or doe, because it has no antlers, as on the
monteleone chariot), and a stag (with antlers). The scenes
are in low relief and show the prey upside down on the wild
animal’s back as if lying along its body. Sometimes the
prey’s legs stick up in the air — as on our chariot — and
sometimes its hind legs hang down, as in the case of the
kid(?), but the lion is always turning its head to sink its fangs
into the prey’s throat. 77 The rendering on the chariot shows
what must be the natural position of the prey with respect
to the predator (see Figures iii.3, iii.6), whether a charging
boar or an attacking lion. There is no sense of perspective in
the gold revetments from delphi or other east Greek works
or in four examples of similar motifs from etruria, all datable
after 550 B.C., in which the predator is not always a lion. 78
The motif does not appear on mainland Greece during the
sixth century B.C., with one isolated exception. 79 it does,
however, occur sporadically six or seven centuries earlier in
egypt. 80 it may have been egypt — where the predator is
always a lion — that furnished the archetype, but the long
gap in time makes such a statement tenuous, because the
motif appears only in about the mid-seventh century B.C.
on east Greek pottery. 81
on the monteleone chariot the motif of a predator with
its prey on its back no longer appears by itself but forms a
group with two birds of prey. is it because the master craftsman
knew that a boar charges, but does not devour, its
prey? or is it because he adopted a composition (to date not
The Monteleone Chariot III: Construction and Decoration 57