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PayvandNews – This exquisite Persian (Iranian) artwork which dates back to the early 1st millennium BC boldly reveals the skills accomplished Persian goldsmiths possessed during the Iron Age II. The artwork is being kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Cup with a frieze of gazelles
The information provided by the museum about this artwork:
Period: Iron Age II
Date: ca. early 1st millennium B.C.
Geography: Northwestern Iran, Caspian region
Culture: Iran
Medium: Gold
Dimensions: H. 2 1/2 in. (6.5 cm)
Classification: Metalwork-Vessels
Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1962
Accession Number: 62.84
Description
A number of vessels similar in form and technique to this one have been excavated in the rich burials at Marlik, a site southwest of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran; one is also known from Susa, in southwestern Iran.
On the body of the cup, four gazelles, framed horizontally by guilloche bands, walk in procession to the left. Their bodies are rendered in the repousse technique and are detailed with finely chased lines to indicate hair and musculature. The projecting heads were made separately, as were the ears and horns, and were fastened invisibly in place by a colloid hard-soldering, a process much practiced in Iran involving glue and copper salt. The hooves and eyes are indented, probably to receive inlays.
