Urartian Painting Fragment with a Male Head from Erebuni: Archaeological Context, Attribution, and Reconstruction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18688/Keywords:
wall paintings, mural with a male head, Urartu, Erebuni, excavations of Arin-Berd, detachment of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, iconography, attribution, archival materials, reconstructionAbstract
A mural fragment depicting a male head from the collection of the Erebuni Historical-Archaeological Reserve-Museum (inv. 16/3) was discovered at Erebuni by a joint archaeological expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the Department for the Protection of the Gosstroy of the Armenian SSR in 1962. This fragment belongs to murals of the large hall of the palace of Argishti I (the so-called “room No. 15”), the excavations of which were carried out by a research team from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. In addition to the multi-tiered compositions of the 8th century B.C., the unique “secular paintings” were unearthed in the large hall, which stand out in the corpus of Urartian monumental art. The mural fragment with the male head belongs to this group.
This unusual painting was repeatedly published, interpreted as the head of the god Haldi or king Argishti, with several versions of reconstruction. But, publications did not touch upon the issue of its attribution. The author managed to find information about the archeological context of the fragment's discovery in the archive of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. To resolve the issue of its correct reconstruction, the author used a watercolor sketch of the fragment from 1962, shedding light on the original appearance of the image. The style, iconography, and archaeological context allow us to attribute this mural as the late Urartian painting of the 7th century B.C. Moreover, the author proposes to read the shape of the helmet as “retrospective” (appealing to the visual culture of the late 9th – early 8th centuries B.C.) and the introduction of the exaggerated ear as an innovative feature.
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