The monumental art and architecture of the Achaemenid period are best exemplified by the ruins of Persepolis, the large ceremonial capital of the empire originally built by Darius I (r. 521–486 B.C.) and expanded by his successors. Persepolis is located thirty miles northwest of Shiraz in the southwest Iranian province of Fars. There, structures like the "Hall of One Hundred Columns" and the "Throne Room of Darius and Xerxes" exhibit features characteristic of Achaemenid palace architecture—large square rooms, with ceilings supported by many columns. Some of the columns in the Throne Room have been reconstructed and stand more than sixty-five feet high.
The column capitals were decorated with the foreparts of bulls, lions, and griffins carved in the round. This object being a prime example of a standard bull's head. The sculptures often consisted of the addorsed foreparts of such creatures to form a solid support for the wooden beams they held. This type of architectural decoration appears to be an entirely Achaemenid creation but this sculpture was reused during the early Islamic period in a building identified as a mosque at Istakhr, near Persepolis. The Medieval geographer Muqadassi mentions exactly that in the tenth century the Istakhr mosque has "columns, with cows on them."
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Found at Istakhr in 1923 according to Ernst Herzfeld (Brummer Gallery Records, inv. no. N4341); before 1929-1938, collection of Ernst Herzfeld (Allen 2016, p. 153, Rugiadi and Colliva 2018, p. 138); 1938, purchased by Joseph Brummer from E. Herzfeld, Princeton, NJ; acquired by the Museum in 1947, purchased from the estate of Joseph Brummer, New York.
"Six Thousand Years of Persian Art," American Institute of Iranian Art and Archaeology, New York, April 24–July 1, 1940.
“Art of the Ancient Near East.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 4, 1949–September 5, 1949.
“Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 7, 1952–September 7, 1953.
“The Grand Gallery,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 19, 1974–January 5, 1975.
Ackerman, Phyllis. 1940. Guide to the Exhibition of Persian Art. New York: The Iranian Institute, p. 309, no. 25.
Pope, Arthur Upham. 1945. Masterpieces of Persian Art. New York: Dryden Press, p. 43 pl. 27.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1948. "Review of the Year," In The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 7 (1), Seventy-Eighth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Year 1947 (Summer, 1948), p. 13.
Louchheim, Aline B. 1949. “Near-Eastern Art Placed on Display: Metropolitan Shows Works that Date to 5,000 Years Ago.” The New York Times, p. 19.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1952. Art Treasures of the Metropolitan. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 27, p. 218, no. 14.
Crawford, Vaughn et al. 1966. Guide to the Ancient Near East Collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 32, fig. 48.
Forsyth, W.H. 1974. "Acquisitions from the Brummer Gallery," In The Grand Gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Sixth International Exhibition Presented by the International Confederation of Dealers in Works of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 3.
Harper, Prudence O. et al. 1984. "Ancient Near Eastern Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 41 (4), Spring 1984, pp. 10-12, fig. 6.
Allen, Lindsay. 2016. "The Greatest Enterprise: Arthur Upham Pope, Persepolis and Achaemenid Antiquities." In Arthur Upham Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art, edited by Yuka Kadoi. Leiden and Boston: Brill, p. 153.
Aram, Kamrooz. 2017. "Bull's Head from Column Capital." In The Artist Project: what artists sees when they look at art, edited by Chris Noey. London: Phaidon Press Limited; New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 24-25.
Rugiadi, Martina and Luca Colliva. 2018. "On the ground. The archaeological site of Istakhr," In Istakhr (Iran), 2011-2016. Historical and archaeological essays, edited by Maria Vittoria Fontana. Quaderni di Vicino Oriente XIII, Roma, p. 138, figs. 19-20.
Fontana, Maria Vittoria. 2018. "17th-early 20th-century European travellers to Istakhr. The contribution of their accounts," In Istakhr (Iran), 2011-2016. Historical and archaeological essays, edited by Maria Vittoria Fontana. Quaderni di Vicino Oriente XIII, Roma, p. 238, note 47.
Dunn-Vaturi, Anne and Martina Rugiadi. 2023. "The Brummer Gallery and the Making of Iranian and Islamic Arts." In The Brummer Galleries, Paris and New York: Defining Taste from Antiquities to the Avant-Garde, edited by Christine Brennan, Christel Hollevoet-Force, and Yaëlle Biro. Boston: Brill, pp. 417, 424, 429, 433-434 and 441-442, n. 19 and Table 10.1, no. 38.
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Includes more than 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the time of the Arab conquests of the seventh century A.D.
