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)

State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. "Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki," June–December 1989.

State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. "Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki," February–July 1990.

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

Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard Art Museums. "Byzantine Women and Their World," October 25, 2002–April 28, 2003.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Culture," September 26, 2006–February 18, 2007.

Wixom, William D. "Curatorial Reports and Departmental Accessions." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 111 (July 1, 1980–June 30, 1981). p. 42.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Notable Acquisitions, 1980-1981 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (1981). p. 19.

Kleinbauer, Walter Eugene. "Recent Major Acquisitions of Medieval Art by American Museums." Gesta 21, no. 1 (1982). p. 75, fig. 2.

Howard, Kathleen, ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983. no. 7, p. 340.

Shepard, Mary B. Europe in the Middle Ages, edited by Charles T. Little, and Timothy B. Husband. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. p. 27, pl. 14.

Pushkin Museum and State Hermitage Museum. Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki: Kratkii Katalog Vystavki. Moscow: Pushkin Museum, 1990. no. 7, pp. 10, 19, fig. 8.

State Hermitage Museum. Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo ot Pozdnei Antichnosti do Pozdnei Gotiki. St. Petersburg: State Hermitage Museum, 1990. no. 7, pp. 22–23.

Franken, Norbert. "Aequipondia: Figürliche Laufgewichte römischer und frühbyzantinischer Schnellwaagen." PhD diss., Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1994. no. CA58, p. 179, pl. 94.

Howard, Kathleen, ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. 2nd ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. no. 7, p. 374.

Wixom, William D., ed. Mirror of the Medieval World. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. no. 31, pp. 26–27.

Evans, Helen C., Melanie Holcomb, and Robert Hallman. "The Arts of Byzantium." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 58, no. 4 (Spring 2001). p. 16.

McClanan, Anne. Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire. The New Middle Ages. New York, 2002. pp. 41–45, fig. 2.13.

Kalavrezou, Ioli. Byzantine Women and their World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2003. pp. 53–56.

Little, Charles T., ed. Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture. New York, New Haven, and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006. no. 67, pp. 162–164.

Wixom, William. "Exhibition Review: Set in Stone, New York." The Burlington Magazine 148, no. 1245 (December 2006). pp. 876–77.

Wixom, William D. "Set in Stone. New York." The Burlington Magazine 148, no. 1245 (December 2006). p. 877.