Brooch with Assyrian human-headed winged bull

Following the excavation of Assyrian palaces in the mid-nineteenth century, ancient Mesopotamian imagery began to be used in European decorative arts, including jewelry and ceramics. Publicity in the form of news coverage and popular books around the excavations, removal of many sculptures from sites in northern Iraq to England and France, and public spectacles such as the reconstructed ‘Nineveh Court’ in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, London, fostered a fascination with Assyria and Assyrian art among the Victorian public.

This brooch may actually have been commissioned by Austen Henry Layard, whose excavations at Nimrud and Nineveh and shipment of Assyrian sculptures from those sites to England made him a Victorian celebrity. It seems most likely that the brooch was made by a jeweller in Bournemouth, England, to a design by Layard. The brooch is in the form of a human-headed winged bull. These and similar winged lion figures, based on the colossal guardian sculptures found flanking important gateways in the palaces, became the modern icons of the Assyrian excavations and were the motif most commonly used in Assyrian revival jewelry and decorative arts.