Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Collections of Mediterranean Antiquities, Vol.2: The Terracotta Objects (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Collections of Mediterranean Antiquities, Vol.2: The Terracotta Objects Lucilla Burn E.P. Zoïtopoúlou, B. Caron, A. Deblois, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Collections of Mediterranean Antiquities, Vol.2: The Terracotta Objects. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pp. xl + 136. €108;US $154. ISBN 9789004183063. This is the second volume in a projected series of publications of the Mediterranean antiquities in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The series is organised by material: volume 1 was devoted to ancient glass and the current volume presents non-pottery objects made of clay. These consist of 42 clay lamps (plus two bronze examples), 21 terracotta figures or fragments of figures, and one terracotta arula or miniature altar. Both the catalogue entries and the introductory material are bilingual, with parallel texts in English and French. The introductory sections offer a brief discussion of the origins of the collection, followed by concise but generally helpful accounts of the technology involved in forming and decorating lamps or figurines, their forms and functions. The main part of the volume is occupied by the catalogue entries. Most of these are very spaciously laid out, occupying a double-page spread with one or more, large, generally clear (if regrettably still black and white) photographs and, where appropriate, drawings on one side, and texts on the other. The catalogue texts provide information on find-spots, where known, technical details such as dimensions and clay colour (with scrupulous reference to Munsell soil colour charts), parallels and discussion. The bibliography is extensive and generally thorough. The English phraseology is at times slightly baffling—few people would understand what is meant by "the main lemma" (xxix); in English tortoises have feet, not paws (terracotta no.5 [101]); nor is it clear why in the description of the ephedrismos group (terracotta 15 [121]) the Eros is described as "not yet a girl". Occasionally the French text seems to contain more detail than the English—if the nine holes pierced in lamp 10 are "trous d'évent" (air holes), it would be nice for English readers to be told [End Page 284] this too (but see Bailey [1975] for an acknowledgment that such holes are puzzling and an interesting brief discussion of their possible function1). If the term "pappas type" is to be used for terracottas 6 and 7, or "Herodian" for lamp 19, it is surely desirable to explain the origin of these, by now, rather esoteric terms; and though lamp 30 is referred to in the introduction (xviii) as an example of African red slip ware, this fact is not really made clear in the catalogue entry itself (63). In terms of the illustrations, while these are mainly clear, the inclusion of a scale would have been useful, and the printing of some of them is rather light in tone. One has to take on trust, for example, the six breasts of the fragment of the torso of the Aphrodite of Ephesus (terracotta 18 [124]). There are places, too, where it seems that more rigorous proof-checking was needed. In the case of terracotta 19, for example, the figure of a standing boy from Egypt, the reader is referred for a parallel to "Bailey, 1988, Q1992 EA, pl.39. (Plastic lamp from the same mould)." But looking up this reference (to vol. iii of the British Museum Catalogue of Lamps), as a "standing boy lamp" sounds rather intriguing, Q1992 is found to be a completely unrelated type, a lamp surmounted by a bust of Athena, complete with helmet. Nor are there any examples of "standing boy" lamps either on plate 39 or elsewhere in this volume. There are several occasions on which one would wish for more—or indeed any—discussion in the "discussion" sections of the catalogue entries: for example, there is plenty that could be said about the symbolic status of the fine geometric horse (figurine 1). This collection contains some high quality items that deserve to be better known, but its cataloguers seem all too reticent about voicing or sharing their views. They have clearly recognised the star quality of the ephedrismos group (terracotta 15), for example, which appears in colour...