Funerary Urns Research Articles

A Portrait of Elizabeth Willing Powel (1743-1830)

List of Illustrations Miniature portrait of Elizabeth Willing, unknown artist, circa 1760. Courtesy of Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, Powel House cover Portrait of Elizabeth Willing Powel, attributed to Matthew Pratt, with dating as herein considered. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Henry D. Gilpin Fund frontispiece FIGURE 1. Portrait of Elizabeth Willing Powel, attributed to Matthew Pratt and painted in 1768-1769, at about the time of her marriage to Samuel Powel. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art 11 FIGURE 2. Memorial to E. R., a mourning portrait painted by James Claypoole, Jr., signed and dated in Jamaica in 1774. Courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art 43 FIGURE 3. Portrait of Ann Shippen Willing, attributed to Matthew Pratt, circa 1786. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, Powel House 45 FIGURE 4. Portrait of Mrs. John Bush (Charity Platt Bush), attributed to Matthew Pratt, circa 1786, in which the subject wears an invented dress similar to that worn by Elizabeth Powel in the frontispiece portrait. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society 46 FIGURE 5. Portrait of Madam Powel (Elizabeth Powel), by Francis Alexander, circa 1825. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 64 1 An Enigmatic Portrait SHE GAZES OUT IMPASSIVELY across the divide of more than two centuries, inviting us to decipher the coded message her portrait contains. No classic beauty, she appears in a strange setting and in clothing not easily labeled. From beneath a beehive of lightly powdered hair, her facial expression conveys a sense of muted sadness. The portrait's dimensions and elements of formal composition suggest that it represented an important commission, such that the artist who painted it would have been expected to do right by his client and her wishes. His subject, wearing a low-cut yellow dress, seems free of the constraint that stays typically imposed in portraiture of women of a certain age in the late eighteenth century.1 The dress's long tight sleeves taper to sawtooth cuffs, drawing attention to the fingers of the sitter's hands, which are interlaced in a pattern that may provide a clue to the painting's hidden meaning. A purple scarf is draped across her body. To reinforce the somber effect, the woman in the yellow dress has avoided wearing any jewelry. On a pedestal to her left stands a funerary urn whose inscription, in the canvas's darkened condition, is now barely legible: Dear Pledg/ of Chaste &/Farewe. In the immediate background looms a rock formation, and in the far distance, on the low horizon to the sitter's right, are trees, a meadow, and hills.2 How else can one interpret this enigmatic portrait except as the picture of a woman in mourning? If the dress she wears and its design are to all appearances unstaid, there is nevertheless no mistaking the urn with its fragmentary inscription and the purple scarf as symbols of grief.3 Today the painting, on generous loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, hangs in the rear second-floor drawing room of that elegant mid-Georgian structure located on Third Street in Philadelphia known as the Powel House. By general agreement it is now accepted as the work of the Philadelphia artist Matthew Pratt, depicting Elizabeth Willing Powel. Because her husband, Samuel Powel, died in 1793, a victim of the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia in the late summer and early fall of that year, it is also frequently assumed that the portrait shows Mrs. …

»Mit navn er Boye, jeg graver dysser og gamle høje«

»Mit navn er Boye, jeg graver dysser og gamle høje«

Two Brazilian archaeological sites investigated by GPR: Serrano and Morro Grande

The application of the ground penetrating radar (GPR) at two archaeological sites, Serrano and Morro Grande, situated in Araruama County, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, aids the study of a prehistoric indigenous culture, associated with the “Tupinambá” that inhabited the region during prehistoric times. The archaeological remains of the study area are mainly characterized by pottery artifacts for several uses, including funerary urns, which were buried within layers of sand and clay. Several profiles were acquired using a RAMAC system, with a 200 and 400 MHz frequency antennae. At the Serrano site, the profiles were acquired around some partially exposed pottery shards, due to sand exploitation. The resultant profiles provided a response model to guide the interpretation of new profiles acquired at other sites in the area, which present similar characteristics. The results showed the great importance of the dielectric permittivity contrast which exists between the targets and the host media, in order for possibly significant features to be identified in radar data.

Two Traditions of Bronze Age Burial in the Stonehenge Landscape

A study of the size of round barrows in relation to their position in the Stonehenge landscape allows us to define two types of mound, here termed ‘Conspicuous’ and ‘Inconspicuous’. Conspicuous barrows are large and prominently located, whilst inconspicuous barrows are smaller and less strikingly placed. Inconspicuous barrows were associated mainly with funerary urns and were constructed throughout the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. Conspicuous barrows contain a wider range of grave goods and were mainly built in the later part of the Early Bronze Age. The Conspicuous barrows were impressive features of the prehistoric landscape and may have been built there because of the long-established significance of some of the local monuments, including Stonehenge itself. They contain exotic grave goods and could have been the burial places of a wider population. By contrast, the Inconspicuous barrows appear to be associated with settlement areas. They contain a range of ceramic grave goods which extend throughout the Early and Middle Bronze Ages and may have been built by the people who were living in the area. The latter tradition is the longer lived and retained its importance into the Middle Bronze Age when more conspicuous mounds were no longer built.

La Nécropole de l'Age du Bronze de "La Croix de la Mission" à Marolles-sur-Seine (Seine-et-Marne)

Abstract The Bronze Age burial ground " La Croix de la Mission " at Marolles-sur-Seine presents a group of 13 ring ditches, 9 burials and 32 cremations of the Late Bronze Age. Two skeletons were dated by Carbon 14 : the first, buried in the central area of the largest ring ditch, confirmed the founding of the necropolis during the Early Bronze Age. The second, buried in the ditch of another of the monuments with a small collection of flint blades and flakes, dates to the Late Bronze Age and corresponds to the last phase of use of the necropolis. The Late Bronze Age cremations can be divided into different categories : cremations with a simple funerary urn or perishable container, complex burials consisting of a funerary urn accompanied by other vessels, or monumental burials. Anthropological studies raise new questions concerning burial rites of this period : recurrent manipulations reveal a wide variety of funerary practices.

Réflexions sur la collection nimoise de verrrerie romaine

The collection has 831 objects from local or regional origin, except for one set coming from the shores of the Aegean sea and another one supposed to come from Tyre ; the collection is essentially composed of findings from graves (and therefore kept in a very good state). An unguent bottle worked from a clay core is dated from the 5th century B.C. Among the blown glasses there are many unguent bottles : a grave excavated in 1918 in Nimes yielded 12 in their original state, among which one with the shape of a bird ; with the Isings types 6, 8, 26, 28, 82 three epochs seem to be represented, a decline in the quality showing as early as the 2nd epoch (Augustus, Tiberius and end of the first and second century). Then come the funerary urns and pots, one of them of a very rare shape supposedly known by a sole other exemplary, dropper or oil cruet ( ?) ; jugs, pitchers and bottles ; vases with opened shapes, one of the most interesting being decorated with a charriot race and belonging to a series made in Switzerland. Recent excavations in the center of Nimes let us hope to find glass from dwelling houses and not nonly from graves, and also more precise chronological data.

A Late Iron Age Burial Enclosure at Maldon Hall Farm, Essex: Excavations 1989

This report describes the total excavation of a small, rectangular ditched enclosure measuring 23.5 m by 15 m. It was shown to have been a cemetery enclosure (probably that of a small family group), belonging to the second half of the 1st century BC. Three vessels containing cremation burials were found in pits within the enclosed area, along with nine other funerary bowls, urns and jars. Whilst cremation burials of this date are fairly common, this is the first published example of such a cemetery enclosure from Essex.

The Tarquins and Servius Tullius at Banquet

Jocelyn Penny Small, The Tarquins and Servius Tullius at Banquet, p. 247-264. A set of late Etruscan funerary urns generally identified as " Melanippa the Wise " is reinterpreted as representing the Tarquinis and Servius Tullius at banquet. In particular, the presence of a figure carrying the fasces removes this group of urns from the Greek realm and firmly places it in an Etrusco-Roman context, as a discussion of the concept of period costume shows.

Le tumulus I des Combes, Les Bondons (Lozère)

ABSTRACT The circumference of the tumulus (diameter: 5 to 6 metres) is bounded by a structure composed of large leaning slabs, placed edge to edge in a narrow trench dug into the substratum. The actual sepulchral surface is indicated by a covered ring of stones. The funerary urn contains the remains of a cremated individual and was found lying flat, with its mouth towards the bottom of a small artificial hollow. Date: end of the seventh century B.C.

A Funerary Urn from Volterra

A funerary urn from Volterra in the Department of Classics of New York University is re-examined in light of recent publications which attempt to systematize the chronological framework of the cinerary urns from Etruria. On the basis of these studies, it is suggested that the New York urn was produced in the first century B. C. in the largest workshop in Volterra.

The Death of Lucretia

During the Hellenistic period the Etruscans depicted not only Greek myths on their funerary urns but also Etruscan-Roman legends. This article studies one small group of urns which were previously identified as the death of Theano from Euripides' Melanippe Desmotis and which are here interpreted as the only extant classical representations of the death of Lucretia. A servant or two stands behind Lucretia who has committed suicide on the right, while in the center her husband, Collatinus, and Lucius Junius Brutus restrain her father, Lucretius, from immediate pursuit of Sextus Tarquinius fleeing off to the left. Between Sextus and the central group stands Venus. On the extreme left sits a wealthy matron, probably Lucretia's mother, in mourning with a statue of a goddess of chastity behind her. These three urns demonstrate how the Etruscan artisan worked. He had a specific vocabulary which was understood by the Etruscan purchaser. He used certain kinds of relationships to signify specific kinds of actions, such as the stopped revenge. That is, the moment selected for these urns focuses on revenge stopped just before it could be exacted and implies, as a study of other urns with securely identified subjects shows, that the pursued always avoids retribution. Hence these three urns show the death of Lucretia in an Etruscan version which implies the successful escape of Sextus. Thus an understanding of the compositional elements of the Etruscan artisan enables not just a simple identification of the participants in any given frieze, but an interpretation of the actual sequence of events. In the late nineteenth century Heinrich Brunn and Gustav K6rte analyzed late Etruscan funerary urns and divided them into groups according to the mythological themes depicted upon them.2 Much of their work is still valid today. There were, however, several groups of urns for which Brunn and K6rte were unable to offer secure identifications. This situation arose for several reasons. Because the urns do not generally carry inscriptions which label the participants in their friezes, their interpretations were and still are most frequently based on a correlation of the urns with securely identified representations, generally culled from Greek art. In other cases, Greek literary sources, especially Euripides, have provided much help. If Greek parallels are scanty or lacking, the urns remain uninterpreted. Yet an approach from a Greek perspective alone ignores the fact that the Etruscans had their own traditions and would wish to portray them as the Greeks did theirs. As a result, one particular source for the scenes on the funerary urns has been almost entirely neglected. It is Etruscan-Roman legends.3 The interdependence of the two cultures, Etruscan and Roman, must be stressed, because the two peoples frequently interacted and shared many traditions. The Etruscan kings, the Tarquins, who ruled Rome in the sixth century B.C., provide the most obvious example. The urns considered here show a scene drawn from the legends associated with the Tarquins, that is, the death of Lucretia, not in the Roman version presented by Livy and other Roman historians, but i an Etruscan variant. Until the present study, no epresentations of the death of Lucretia in classical art were known, although there are several lengthy 1I thank Dr. Guglielmo Maetzke, Superintendent of Antiquities for Tuscany, for generously giving me permission to study and publish the urns discussed here. I am particularly appreciative of a Grant-in-Aid from the American Council of Learned Societies for the summer of 1974 which enabled me to study the urns in European collections. The substance of this article was presented in a colloquium on myth and legend in ancient art and literature held at Brown University, April 25-26, 1974, I also thank the following people for their helpful comments and criticisms: Professors Mark I. Davies, Agnes K. Michels, and Kyle M. Phillips, Jr.; and Robin Johnson. Autumn

Ceramic Evidence for the Prehistoric Distribution of Maize In Mexico

This archaeological and botanical study of maize (Zea mays) represented on Zapotec funerary urns is relevant to studies of the development and spread of prehistoric cultures, and of the evolution of maize agriculture. In the Valley of Oaxaca, circa A.D. 600-1200, the Zapotecs attached models of actual ears of maize to their ceramic funerary urns. The high frequency of the depiction of Nal Tel on the urns suggests that Nal Tel had important symbolic associations for the Zapotecs. It was found that the races Chapalote, Harinoso de Ocho, and a type of dent com had a much wider geographical distribution in Precolumbian times than they do today.

Aeneas and Turnus on Late Etruscan Funerary Urns

The Etruscans often depended on Greek stylistic and iconographical models. When they borrowed from the Greeks, they did so with discrimination; and if they altered their models, they did so consciously. A certain lack of inventiveness on the part of the Etruscans does not necessarily imply a lack of intelligence or judgment. As the Etruscans turned eagerly towards Greek literature and art, they maintained their own culture with its traditions and history. Their own heritage was not so completely overwhelmed by Greek things as to leave barely any traces in Etruscan art. Here we will examine two related scenes on late Etruscan

Funerary Urn in the Form of a House

Funerary Urn in the Form of a House

The Funerary Urn of Francis I

One of the more important monuments of the French Renaissance stands in the south transept of the abbey church of St.-Denis. It is the white marble Funerary Urn of Francis I (Fig. 1). When this king died at Rambouillet on March 31, 1547 he had willed his heart, brain, and entrails to the nearby abbey of Notre-Dame-des-Hautes-Bruyeres.1 To receive these precious remains, a document dated February 19, 1550 affirms that Philibert Delorme, newly appointed architect to the king, had commissioned this monument to the sculptor Pierre Bontemps.2

The Funerary Urn of Francis I

The Funerary Urn of Francis I

Accessions to the British Museum (Bloomsbury)

AMONG the accessions to the British Museum (Bloomsbury) reported at the meeting of the trustees on October 8 (the first meeting to be held after the recess) were a number of antiquities from Central America, part of the collection made by the late Mr. T. W. Gann, and bequeathed by him to the Museum. They were accepted by the trustees in May last, but this selection has been received at the Museum only recently. The more important specimens are a number of carved jades, including figures of men and animals, coming mostly from Copan in Honduras. The best example is a magnificent green jade plaque with figures carved in relief. It is said to be the finest known example of carved jade from Central America. It was found at Teotihuacan in Mexico, but is thought to have come originally from Quiriqua in Honduras. By its style it is assigned to the Old Empire of the Maya, and dates probably from the fifth century A.D. In addition the bequest includes a number of fantastically shaped flints of unusual size. Some of these range up to seventeen inches long. There are also a number of painted stucco heads, with elaborate headdresses and some beautiful examples of the Mayan painted pottery. Another accession to the American collections obtained by purchase is an archaeological collection from Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador, while an anonymous loan consists of a notable series of antiquities from mexico, which includes a remarkable series of funerary urns in human shape from Oaxaca. The Museum has now received its share of the antiquities found by Sir Leonard Woolley and Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan on their respective expeditions in Northern Syria, which were conducted under the auspices of the Museum jointly with the School of Archaeology in Iraq. Grants have been allocated for the renewal of both these expeditions in 1938-39.

Monograph on ornaments on zapotec funerary urns.

Monograph on ornaments on zapotec funerary urns.

Two Etruscan Funerary Urns in the New York University Archaeological Museum

Previous articleNext article No AccessTwo Etruscan Funerary Urns in the New York University Archaeological MuseumHelen Rees CliffordHelen Rees Clifford Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 41, Number 2April–June 1937 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 1Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/498420 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright © 1937 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.