The decoration is divided into three tiers. In the uppermost, a swan (which may allude to the myth of Leda) approaches a woman who extends her palm; to the right, another woman is seated by an overturned jar. In the second tier, a seated woman is confronted by a standing woman with an outstreched right hand. In the third tier, two nude men are depicted with a seated woman in a tub-like boat. Scholars have debated the identification of this incised, bronze nose piece. It has been considered to be an Etruscan work of the third century B.C. but is, more likely, a much later Roman work of the fourth century A.D.
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Title:Bronze nose piece from a horse's trappings
Period:Late Imperial
Date:4th century CE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Bronze
Dimensions:L. 10 5/16 in. (26.2 cm.) W. 7 7/16 in. (18.9 cm.)
Classification:Bronzes
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1913
Accession Number:13.225.7
Said to be from Rome
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1914. "Department of Classical Art: Accessions of 1913. Bronzes." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 9(4): pp. 93–94, fig. 5.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1915. Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes. no. 126, pp. 80–81, New York: Gilliss Press.
Dean, Bashford. January 1915. Handbook of Arms and Armor : European and Oriental, Including the William H. Riggs Collection. p. 199, New York: Gilliss Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 199, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Brown, Donald F. 1941. "Forty-Second General Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America: A Late Antique Engraved Plaque from Egypt." American Journal of Archaeology, 45(1): p. 95.
Brown, Donald F. 1941. "A Late Antique Engraved Plaque from Egypt." Marsyas, : pp. 17ff., figs. 1–4, pls. VIII-IX.
Parlasca, Klaus. 1951. "Das Trierer Mysterien-mosaik und das aegyptische Ur-Ei." Trierer Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kunst des Trierer Landes, 20: p. 113, pl. 7.
Moreau, Jacques. 1960. Monumenta Artis Romanae: Das Trierer Kornmarktmosaik, 2. p. 16, pl. 13, Köln: M. Dumont Schauberg.
Weitzmann, Kurt. 1979. Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century no. 215, pp. 239–40, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Musée & Galerie des Beaux-Arts. 1981. Profil du Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York : de Ramsès à Picasso. no. 52, p. 59, Paris: Musée & Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
