Grave Stele of Girl with Doves: A Beloved Child

Abstract

Grave Stele of Girl with Doves: A Beloved Child HELAINE L. SMITH There is, in a sunlit, quiet corner of one of the Greek galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, perhaps its loveliest Parian marble: a grave stele,1 just under 3-feet tall, of a little girl holding two pet doves (Fig. 1). My attention was first drawn to her by Claireve Grandjouan, for years the honored Department Chair of the Hunter Classics Department. And ever since, when at the museum alone or with a friend, I’ve looked at this piece, reliably there except for a brief sojourn in 2016 at the Getty. Back now, it sits again in rooms with other stelae of lesser beauty, some of which depict children holding flowers or warriors holding oil flasks2 —objects that signify, rather than arion 29.3 winter 2022 Grave Stele of Girl with Doves. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Fletcher Fund 1927. 86 grave stele of girl with doves: a beloved child reveal, the life of the deceased. This stele, though, is full of life and beauty, and makes one want to discover, insofar as possible, what makes it so moving. Of the other stelae, many conform to a stylized pattern. Carved in higher relief than the child, and more coarsely, the dead figures are seated on chairs, with mourners standing behind or to the side and grasping in their right hands the right hand of the deceased in a gesture of farewell. Despite the handshake, the dead appear motionless in body and mind: they look off into space rather than to figures present in the same plane. A few stelae retain their pediments—the little girl with doves does not—and the extant pediments have corner Sphinxes3 and a center Siren with spread wings and the ritualized hand placement signifying grief, one on the heart, the other on the head. Family groups are common, but the little girl with doves stands alone. And children, when they are present on stelae, are smaller in size than the adults but have adult body proportions. The stele of the little girl defies every one of these conventions. Its excellence lies in what makes anything a masterpiece— compositional balance and purity, the relationship between parts, the way, specifically, the soft, rounded curves of the body and the vertical folds of the garment complement each other, the way the straight lines themselves are modified by diamond-shaped diagonals, the masterful creation of light surface and dark shadow, with its splendid illusion of depth, and the quietness that shadow and open space together impart. Details of hair, fingertips and toes are exquisitely incised, the shape of the child’s body beneath the drapery quietly molded, with the naturalness of the pose defining a specific moment that is also a passage to eternity. And there is something more—details that speak directly to us through the centuries to reveal how beloved this child was to the family commissioning the stele. The presentation of beloved children is, in fact, a recurring feature in ancient hymn, epic, and drama.4 When Athena Helaine L. Smith 87 brushes aside the arrow meant for Menelaus, she does so as gently as a mother might brush a fly from the face of her sleeping child (Hom. Il. 4.130-131). There is instance after lovely instance of the indulgent parent. When Nausicaa tells her “papa dear” that she must take on the task of household laundry, he immediately understands what she really has in mind and, without saying what he knows, gives her a fine wagon and mules (Hom. Od. 6.66-70). When tiny Artemis perches on her father’s knee and asks for gift after gift, Zeus smiles and grants her all she asks and more (Callim. Hymn 3.440 ). When Hector lived, he would, Andromache says, place Astyanax on his knee at feasts and feed him “only marrow and the rich flesh of sheep” (Hom. Il. 22.500-501). Older children care as lovingly for younger ones. When “Doso” ceases nursing Demophoon, his four sisters rush to his side to cradle, bathe and soothe their baby brother (Hom. Hymn Dem. 284-291). The...