The sphinx, the gorgon and the siren: three bronze figurines from Cape Colonna and production sites in Sparta, Corinth and Magna Graecia in the archaic period
By a re-examination of three bronze figurines found in the foundations of a building forming part of the most ancient sanctuary dedicated to Hera Lacinia on Cape Colonna near Crotone (Calabria), the author aims to solve the much–debated question of whether they should be attributed to workshops situated in the Greek motherland or in the colonies of southern Italy.
The author offers a detailed analysis of the stylistic and formal characteristics of each figurine, combined with a meticulous study of the stylistic development of bronze sphinxes, gorgons and sirens in the archaic period in Sparta (or rather, in Laconia), in Corinth and in Magna Graecia. The conclusions he draws from this examination are as follows: all three figurines are all that remains of the appliqué decorations of the same large metal vessel (dinos), produced by a Corinthian craftsman soon after the mid sixth century BC, including the siren, even though based on a Laconian prototype, the only one available at the time.
The study is concluded with a short chapter containing observations on the evaluation of Greek art in the West, to which a major exhibition was devoted in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice a few years ago (1996), but about which scholars continue to disagree, especially with regard to bronze sculptures: fundamentally due to the difficulty of discerning the elements of creative originality in an output that was often stylistically heterogeneous and characterized by a pronounced “inventive eclecticism” in the archaic period.
