Brooch in Form of a Bird of Prey

Title: Brooch in Form of a Bird of Prey

Date: late 500s

Culture: Vendel

Medium: Copper alloy with silver overlay

Dimensions: Overall: 2 1/8 x 1 1/4 x 3/8 in. (5.4 x 3.2 x 1 cm)

Classification: Metalwork-Brass

Credit Line: Purchase, Leon Levy and Shelby White Gift, Rogers Fund, and funds from various donors, 1991

Object Number: 1991.308

The head and right leg of this elegant bird brooch are in left profile, while its rounded body and flaring tail are presented frontally. The extended right wing curves behind the tail. The edges of the neck, wings, and tail, and the upper part of the leg are outlined with pseudobeading. Nine stamped (punched?) crayfish decorate the tail. The position of the head, supported by the raised leg, indicates that the bird is sleeping.

The brooch is said to have come from a Scandinavian collection before being sold in London. In fact, it is more or less comparable in form to the saddle mounts from Vallstenarum (now in the Statens Historiska Museet, Stockholm) in the Vendel style (550–800)—named after the objects excavated at the royal site in Sweden—and to the shield mounts from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, now in the British Museum. Whereas punched decoration consisting of crayfish is unique, in the knowledge of this author, stamped geometric decoration is found on the tails of birds of prey on openwork disks from Germany and on an example of a fibula or mount from Canterbury, now in the Vitoria and Albert Museum, London. However, the high relief of the eye and the sharply curved caplike eyebrow and beak, which characterize the Metropolitan Museum's bird, are typical features of the Vendel style, and would seem to argue for a tentative attribution of the bird to Scandinavia and a date of about 600.

[ Robert Haber and Associates Inc., Ancient Art(sold 1991)]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Mirror of the Medieval World," March 9–June 1, 1999.

Wixom, William D. "Curatorial Reports and Departmental Accessions." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 122 (July 1, 1991–June 30, 1992). pp. 40–41.

Brown, Katharine R. Migration Art, A.D. 300-800. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. no. 62, pp. 43–44.

Wixom, William D., ed. Mirror of the Medieval World. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. no. 58, p. 47.

Brown, Katharine R., Dafydd Kidd, and Charles T. Little, ed. From Attila to Charlemagne: Arts of the Early Medieval Period in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. p. 310, 359, fig. 25.1.