A PHOENICIAN GLASS HEAD PENDANT CIRCA 6TH-3RD CENTURY B.C.

拍品描述

A PHOENICIAN POLYCHROME GLASS HEAD PENDANT, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, CIRCA 6TH-3RD CENTURY B.C. Of small scale and modelled in the round, the pendant formed as a bearded or hooded human head with a broad ovoid face tapering to a rounded chin, surmounted by a conical blue cap or headdress drawn to a small pointed apex that also serves as the suspension terminal. The features are built up in applied trails and blobs of opaque coloured glass over a core: the face itself worked in deep red, the projecting ears and full parted lips in bright yellow, the prominent ridged nose in red, and the almond-shaped eyes rendered as concentric yellow discs centred with cobalt-blue pupils. Traces of weathering, encrustation and iridescent surface deposits cover much of the surface, characteristic of long burial. The face type, with its schematic frontal symmetry, staring inlaid eyes and heavily stylised features, belongs to the well-established Phoenician and Punic tradition of anthropomorphic head pendants produced across the workshops of the eastern and central Mediterranean. Such heads were made by winding and trailing molten rods of coloured glass around a removable core, then tooling the applied elements while still hot. The apex of the cap is pierced or drawn out to allow suspension, indicating use as a pendant, most likely strung on a cord or incorporated into a necklace with beads and other amuletic elements. Glass of this kind carried significance well beyond its decorative appeal. In the first millennium B.C., core-formed polychrome glass was a luxury product circulated through Phoenician mercantile networks that stretched from the Levantine coast to Carthage, Sardinia, Ibiza and the wider Punic west. The bright opaque colours, particularly the deep cobalt blue derived from cobalt oxide and the opaque red produced by cuprous oxide, were technologically demanding to achieve, and objects made in this palette were valued both as portable wealth and as apotropaic charms. The staring, exaggerated eyes are consistent with the protective function widely ascribed to these heads, which are frequently recovered from tomb contexts and understood to have warded against the evil eye and hostile forces. The identity of the figure represented on such pendants has been variously interpreted, ranging from demonic guardians and bearded male apotropaia to representations of foreigners or deities within the Phoenician religious sphere. The conical headdress on the present example places it within the group of hooded or capped male heads rather than the bearded warrior type, though the two categories overlap in workshop practice and iconographic function. This pendant exemplifies the small-format polychrome glass amulets that defined one of the most distinctive artistic products of the Phoenician world. Its survival with its full range of applied colours legible, from the blue cap through to the yellow ears and lips, illustrates the technical ambition of the core-formed glass tradition and its confident use of colour as the primary carrier of meaning. Dimensions: Height 2.2 cm

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