Steelyard Weight with a Bust of a Byzantine Empress and a Hook

The weight is cast in the form of the bust of an empress, who is portrayed frontally, holding a furled scroll in her left hand and raising her right hand from beneath her mantle to gesture as she speaks. She is elaborately coiffed, with tightly curled waves framing her face and braids drawn up from the nape of the neck and turned under, above her forehead, in a style popular in Late Antique and Early Byzantine periods. Her diadem is meant to appear richly jeweled, with hanging strands of what seem to be large pearls echoed in her four-tiered gem- and pearl-studded necklace. The bust is set on a plinth bordered with pearls and decorated with a guilloche pattern. When the weight was suspended by its hook, it could be moved along a ruled steelyard to establish the weight of the commodity hung from the opposite side.

Weights in the form of an empress were very popular in the Early Byzantine era (especially from the fifth to seventh century), and many survive in private and public collections in America and abroad. The quality of the present work, however, is exceptional: While in keeping with the hieratic style customary for Early Byzantine weights, the face, hair, jewerly, and clothing are particularity sensitivity and carefully modeled. The eyes especially are uniquely realistic in comparison with the wide- open, vacant gaze usually characterisitc of such weights.

Scholarship generally is in accord in recongnizing that existing empress weights often are portraits of members of the ruling Theodosian house. Pulcheria (r. 414–53), Licinia Eudoxia (r. 439–55), and Galla Placidia ( about 390–455), each have been cited as the possible subject of this weight, although the most frequent references are to Licinia Eudoxia. As dynastic rather than individual traits usually were emphasized in portrayals of Theodosian empresses, the Museum's weight cannont be identified convincingly on the basis of present evidence as a portrait of any particular lady, in spite of its careful modeling.

George Zacos, Basel, Switzerland (sold 1980)

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