Epinetrae: Women and weaving in the ancient world

 Producing cloth for garments and other fabrics needed in a household was a significant task for women. It required special equipment such as a loom and loomweights as well as this utensil, known as an onos or epinetron. It is a generally semicircular tile that is closed at one end. It was placed over the lower thigh and knee. Although its exact function is not clear, the roughened upper surface suggests that it served to prepare wool for spinning. - Metropolitan Museum of Art

 Epinetra were often decorated, sometimes depicting black figure Amazon women, as in the case of an epinetron painted by Sappho between 500-490 BCE. A female head was often placed on the closed end where the knee was covered. Because of the strong association between wool-working and the ideal woman and wife, as in the case of Penelope weaving in the Odyssey, it was associated with weddings so decorated epinetra were placed on the graves of unmarried girls, or dedicated at temples of female deities.

Black-figured decorated epinetron, 500 BCE, depicting a scene of women weaving at The Louvre courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Red-figured decorated epinetron, 450 BCE, decorated on both sides with youths and women at the Antikensammlung in Berlin courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marcus Cyron.

Black-figured Terracotta epinetra (leg guard used in carding wool) ca. 510–500 BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Illustration of the use of an epinetron courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor MM.

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Review: Women at War in the Classical World by Paul Chrystal

 © 2020 by Mary Harrsch

"Women at War in the Classical World" by Paul Chrystal is a compilation of anecdotes, gleaned from a variety of ancient sources, about the activities of women in societies directed by men engaged in martial activities. The book divides these anecdotes into subunits for the Greeks and Romans.  From there it is further subdivided into chapters on women in legend and women in history. But I thought it suffered beyond that point because it lacked a topical framework to organize the various activities associated with the decisions to make war, the funding of warfare, the logistics to prepare for war, the military forces in the field, and finally the fate of victims of ancient conflict.  Chrystal had anecdotes for each of these phases of ancient warfare but they were jumbled together so much that I felt like I was bumping along a Roman road in a crude oxcart with no suspension.  There was no transitional phrases to give you a clue as to the relationship between one paragraph and the next so I found his narrative hard to follow.

At one point we jump from an anecdote about Hortensia's oratorical prowess to object to the Second Triumvirate's tax levy on wealthy women to the ostentatious behavior of Catiline's wife Sempronia and then to Porcia's rather extreme strategies to get Brutus to share his plans assassinate Caesar.

Although the tax levy issue could be categorized as eventually funding warfare, the behavior of Catiline's wife and Porcia, without any reference to warfare seem extraneous and irrelevant to the topic without some additional details. Furthermore, these brief summaries are not even presented in chronological order thereby jumbling the history so a development of behavioral patterns based on precedent cannot even be considered. 

Chrystal's book provides a number of documented references to women in the classical world, which, in itself, constitutes a helpful resource.  I just felt it could have been organized much better to focus the work on warfare and irrelevant anecdotes pruned.

Overall, I found my expectation of the contents based on the book's title simply wasn't met. Chrystal's decision to document the activities of ancient women in a martial society as revealed by a variety of ancient sources was not a comprehensive analysis of how these activities supported and encompassed the prosecution of ancient warfare which is what I had anticipated.

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Rape of the Sabine Women in Art

The ancient legend of the abduction of the Sabine women by the men of Rome has inspired artists for centuries. Upon finding the city bereft of women, Rome’s founder, Romulus, invited the neighboring peoples to a festival as a pretense to the abduction. Each Roman youth carried off an unmarried woman from the Sabine contingent as his bride. When the Sabines later attacked Rome to reclaim their females, the women ran onto the battlefield and secured peace between their fathers and husbands.

Here we see two dramatic treatments of the subject by Italian artists Andrea Andreani and Giambologna.  Andreani, an Italian engraver, revived the technique of the chiaroscuro print, the use of light and shadow to define three-dimensional objects, at the end of the sixteenth century and created a number of ambitious works including a reproduction of Andrea Mantegna's "Triumph of Caesar".  Some evidence exists that ancient Greek and Roman artists used chiaroscuro effects but the technique was first brought to its full potential by Leonardo da Vinci in the late 15th century.  Andreani's 1585 woodcut, Rape of the Sabines,  reproduces, to scale but with slight adjustments, the plaque that was intended to clarify the subject of Giambologna's celebrated marble group in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence which had been unveiled in Florence in 1583 to public acclaim.

The original woodcut is printed in three sections on six sheets of paper. To make a chiaroscuro woodcut, the key block was inked with the darkest tone and printed first. Subsequent blocks were inked with progressively lighter tones and carefully measured to print in register with the key block. Chiaroscuro woodcuts are usually printed in only one color, brown, gray, green, or sepia being preferred. The process attempted to imitate wash and watercolor drawings and also became popular as an inexpensive method of reproducing paintings. The print in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a rather harsh orange.  Whether this was intended to be brown or sepia I'm not sure.  I thought the color obscures the details, though, so I have converted it to black and white and adjusted the saturation and contrast to showcase the intricacies of Andreani's work. 

The sculpture is the original work of Gaimbologna's "Kidnapping of the Sabine Women" on display in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence that the woodcut is based upon. The full length image is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Thermos.  The detailed closeups are my own images taken in Florence in 2005.

Rape of the Sabines chiaroscuro woodcut by Andrea Andreani, 1585

Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

Detail of Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

Kidnapping of the Sabines by Giambologna, 1574-1582

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Luna Roman-era painting lost for over a century to be auctioned by Christies

This article about a beautiful painting by Philippine artist, Juan Luna y Novicio (1857-1899), caught my eye, not only because it has an ancient Roman subject, but because it reminds me so much of one of my favorite Victorian artists, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It is expected to bring close to $10 million dollars when it goes up for bid on November 30.


Christies lot notes:

Las damas Romanas (Roman maidens) by the Filipino painter Juan Luna y Novicio (1857-1899) was an unlocated work for over a century ever since it was painted. Documentation was scant: Las Damas Romanas was but a title in the 1957 biography of Luna by Carlos E. Da Silva; it was but a faded black and white photograph from the file of the pre-war art dealer and historian Alfonso T. Ongpin, reproduced by Santiago Pilar in the standard work on the artist (1980). Las Damas Romanas, an early work, enlarges our knowledge and appreciation of Luna who is unfortunately remembered for his largest work Spoliarium (1884) that may well be his most important painting historically, but is not necessarily the best aesthetically.

To appreciate the dark and gory Spoliarium that now dominates the Hall of the Masters in the National Gallery in Manila, one has to remember that aside from being an artist, Juan Luna is also considered a hero and patriot of the Philippines. Spoliarium won the first gold medal in the Madrid Exposition of Fine Arts in 1884, a triumph that made Luna and his contemporary, Felix Resurrection Hidalgo, who won a silver medal, the first "international artists" of the Philippines. Luna painted a scene from ancient Roman history, the corpse of a gladiator being discarded in a room under the Coliseum. So powerful was this image it was used by Filipino propagandists as an allegory of the abuses of Spain in the colonial Philippines. It takes a bit of imagination and a heavy dose of textbook history for young Filipinos to see oppression and the Philippines in a painting best understood alongside the recent films like "Gladiator". One can read many meanings into a painting, sometimes, even meanings unintended by the artist. For example, in 1983, Spoliarium was seen to be quite prophetic. Benigno S. Aquino was assassinated on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport and one in a series of photographs showing soldiers dragging the corpse into a military van has been said to mirror the main element in Luna's 1884 canvas.

Las Damas Romanas is likewise drawn from ancient Roman history, but is more cheerful. Two ladies lie on the wide steps of a dwelling, one of them holding the reins of two frisky pet dogs, restraining them from scaring away frolicking doves. In the background behind them appears to be a shelf with assorted artifacts, to their left is a small shrine with a triangular pediment with incense smoke rising from a burner in front of it. Should Las Damas Romanas be seen at face value? Is it but a typical domestic scene in ancient Rome or does it have deeper, hidden meanings?

There are three main pictorial elements here: women, dogs, and doves. Dogs were part of Roman life and were basically used: for hunting, as guardians of home or property, and in this case as women's companions. These slim and elegant dogs were pets, although they had to be kept on a leash. An inscription said to have been found in the ruins of Pompeii reads "cave canis." This is a warning still used today---"Beware of Dog". Doves were often given erotic connotations; in the Philippines, to refer to a woman as kalapatingmababaanglipad (low-flying dove) means she is of ill-repute. So is this an allegory of restrained lust or merely a way for Luna to execute many details copied from trips to Naples, Pompeii, Venice and Florence? It has even been suggested that the dark-haired woman on the right is Luna's wife, Paz Pardo de Tavera, who he shot and killed in Paris in 1892 at the height of a jealous rage. That would have fitted the theme of love and lust but unfortunately, Luna was not married when he painted Las Damas Romanas in Rome in 1882. He had not even met his future wife at the time. That multiple meanings, different interpretations can be found in one painting always adds to its interest.

Las Damas Romanas was painted while Luna was a student of the Spanish Academy in Rome. It is a work completed between his prize-winning works "Death of Cleopatra" that won a silver medal in the Madrid Exposition of 1881 and the Spoliarium that garnered the first gold medal in the Madrid Exposition of 1884. It is not well known that Luna spent six years in Rome from 1878-1884. He enrolled in the school of painting in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando) in Madrid in 1877 and there took courses in color and composition and began a study of ancient art. One of his professors, Alejo Vera, went to Rome in 1878 to fulfill some commissions and he took Luna along as an apprentice.

Two years after arriving in what Luna described as "the capital of the Caesars", his teacher returned to Madrid and Luna stayed another four years to complete his studies. Many students of the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid were allowed to gain credit for their stay in Rome. The course of study usually took three years: the first year was spent copying Greek and Roman sculpture to learn anatomy, they studied and copied classical architecture to learn ideal proportion, and finally they copied old master paintings; the second year they did work on the human figure; and by the third year they utilized all the skills learned by practice, travel, and observation into one large historical painting drawn from either religious, classical, or historical texts. Hence the 1881 "Death of Cleopatra" acquired by the Spanish government could be seen as his graduation work. Recognizing his talent, Luna was then awarded a four-year grant by the Ayuntamiento de Manila to continue his studies in Rome. The grant was also a commission to do one painting for the Ayuntamiento but the grateful Luna gave them three, one of these, Pacto de Sangre (Blood Compact) is still extant and hangs in the seat of government, Malacanang Palace in Manila.

Las Damas Romanas is one of a number of drawings, watercolors, and oils by Luna that have surfaced in the past quarter of a century. As an important example of his early work, Las Damas Romanas helps us understand his training as an academic painter and enriches our knowledge of his life and work. - by Ambeth R Ocampo, Chariman, National Historical Institute, The Philippines

I always thought doves were a symbol of purity and were used as such in ancient augury rituals. Apparently, the article author points this out as well:

"Against the dark interpretation of the doves, some observers have noted that the doves in Roman mythology really symbolize the divine. The fact that the two ladies seek to restrain the dogs from attacking the birds appear to highlight the sacredness of the divine. This makes it really a picture of the abundant richness of life, with humankind shown in harmony with Nature." - By Lito Zulueta, Philippine Daily Inquirer

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