The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal Volume 15 1987

34 Vermeuletails certainly would have been included, and the subjects,again, ought to have been linked with the mythsof Achilles, the greatest Greek hero and an ancestor ofAlexander and Pyrrhus.There is a scrap of evidence that meets all these criteria,including the possibilities of provenance. The leftshoulder-plate of a bronze cuirass features a female headin an Amazonian cap, the side flaps of which turn intodecorative volutes at the curving edges of the background(fig. 6). She wears earrings of Lydian or Ionianform and a slender torque with a flower suspended fromit. This sad-faced Amazon can only be Queen Penthesilea,and her slight inward turn of the head affirms thededuction that another head rose out of the oppositeshoulder-plate. 19The head on the wearer's right, theplace of honor, could only have been Achilles. Thebody of the cuirass was probably undecorated, beyondsuggesting the ideal anatomy common to such objectsat the time, but the complete ensemble would have beenfully worthy of a princely dedication in the Italic aftermathof Alexander the Great. 20Museum of Fine ArtsBostonFigure 6. Queen Penthesilea on the left shoulder-plateof a cuirass. Early Hellenistic period. Bronze.H: 16 cm (6 5 /i6"). Boston, Museum of FineArts, Frank B. Bemis Fund, 1986.242. Photo:Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.19. H (max.): 16 cm (6 5 /i6"); W (max.): 12 cm (4 n /ie"). The patinais the rich, deep green of the finest Greek metalwork from 350 to275 B.C.20. The comparable right shoulder-plates (covering the straps) ofGreek bronze cuirasses of the fourth century B.C. are collected on pp.51—54 of Arnold Hagemann, Der Metallharnisch, vol. 1 of GriechischePanzerung: Ein entwicklungsgeschichte Studie zur antiken Bewaffnung(Leipzig and Berlin, 1919). The famous Siris Bronzes in the BritishMuseum (pp. 51—52, fig. 62) are basically the left and right shoulderplatesand back of the neck and shoulders of such a piece of armor.Also, H. B. Walters, Catalogue of the Greek, Roman, and EtruscanBronzes in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London,1899), no. 285, pp. 39-40, pi. VIII. In reasonably high relief, mirroredpairs of Greeks attack fallen Amazons, similarly balanced. They arepossibly Achilles slaying Penthesilea on the left, and Ajax Oileusdispatching Derinoe on the right. The southeast coast of Italy as wellas western Mainland Greece, the Peloponnesus, and, lately, Macedoniaor Thrace are the sources for a number of these plates or coveringsfor cuirass fastenings.