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Etropolitan Useum of Art: FOR Release

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired and put on display a 3rd millennium BC Sumerian statuette of a man, one of the earliest cast in copper. The 14.5 inch tall statuette depicts a nude man carrying a square basket containing bricks on his head, and possesses a monumental quality through subtle simplification of forms. Though casting copper is more difficult than bronze, this statuette demonstrates the technique was successfully used in ancient Sumer by 2600 BC. The figure's stance clearly shows his effort in supporting the heavy load, and its artistic idiom remains immediately acceptable and striking over four millennia later.

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Mohamed Ali
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82 views

Etropolitan Useum of Art: FOR Release

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired and put on display a 3rd millennium BC Sumerian statuette of a man, one of the earliest cast in copper. The 14.5 inch tall statuette depicts a nude man carrying a square basket containing bricks on his head, and possesses a monumental quality through subtle simplification of forms. Though casting copper is more difficult than bronze, this statuette demonstrates the technique was successfully used in ancient Sumer by 2600 BC. The figure's stance clearly shows his effort in supporting the heavy load, and its artistic idiom remains immediately acceptable and striking over four millennia later.

Uploaded by

Mohamed Ali
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Jtn^-Gjirdner

THE

ETROPOLITAN
USEUM OF ART

NEWS

Wednesday, July 18, 1956

FOR
RELEASE

FIFTH AYE.at 82 STREET NEW YORK

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM EXHIBITS RECENTLY-ACQUIRED SUMERIAN STATUETTE;


3RD MILLENNIUM B.C. FIGURE OF MAN IS ONE OF EARLIEST CAST IN COPPER

The earliest cast statuette in The Metropolitan Museum of Art goes on display
today (Wednesday, July 18) in the Museum's Great Hall.

It is cast in copper,

probably from a wax model, and was acquired recently.


Casting in copper is notoriously more difficult than casting in bronze; nevertheless, as this male figure clearly shows, the technique was successfully practised
by 2600 B.C. in ancient Sumer (now Iraq).
The statuette, which is only 14 l/2 inches high, possesses a monumental quality
so that photographs of it suggest a tall figure of life size.

It represents a man,

nude but for a double coil around his waist, and bearing a burden upon his head.
When the statuette was cleanedfor it was deeply incrustedthis burden was revealed
as being a square basket containing bricks. Men carrying such baskets appear elsewhere in Sumerian art, for one is to be seen on a foundation stele from the excavations at Khafaje near the Diyala River in Iraq, made a number of years ago by the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
The copper figure is remarkable for its artistic qualities. The stance of
the man with his arms bent at the elbows and his slightly flexed knees indicate
very clearly the fact that he is supporting a heavy load.

"The subtle simplifica-

tion of the forms," notes Charles K. Wilkinson, Curator of Near Eastern Archaeology
at the Museum, "is such that the artistic idiom of more than four millennia ago is
not only immediately acceptable to our eyes but strikes us at once as direct and
masterful."
For those interested in detail, the eyes of the statuette offer a nice problem.
It can be seen that they have a horizontal slit instead of a circular iris. Could
It be that this is the continuation of an ancient neolithio custom revealed by
the archaeological finds at Jericho; where it was discovered that cowrie shells were
sometimes inserted into the eyesockets of human skulls made lifelike by plaster
modeling?

Or was it that the sculptor, by pressing his thumbnail into the wax

model, indicated the iris in the easiest and quickest possible way?

However this may

be, no detail of the eye or any other part detracts from the controlled vigor of this
remarkable ancient copper figure.
-000-

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