Man Riding a Horse

A stiffly posed rider perches on the back of a horse, which has a thin mane and raised forelock. The bearded man appears to have a standing posture, with his feet positioned perfectly flat. The precariousness of his position is counterbalanced by the reins that extend diagonally from the horse’s head to his waist-high hands. His short hair, rendered by radiating straight incisions, is bound by a deeply incised circlet, which may have originally been inlaid with another metal. His face is marked by slightly bulging eyes, a large nose, small mouth, and receding chin. The small ears, bulging eyes, and forelock of the horse’s head are executed by raised lumps. The horse’s body, legs, and tail, as well as the man’s arms, consist of simple tubular metal rods. These are given vitality through their expressive bending, as seen in the curve of the front legs, which makes the horse appear as if he were straining forward, while the man’s arms create a rounded form as he pulls up on the reins. The piece is unusual, with no exact known parallels. G. Hanfmann compares it to several bronze and terracotta specimens, placing it in the Near East in the late second or early first millennium BCE (1). He notes, however, that bronze representations of horsemen are quite rare in the Near East. Rather, one finds them in growing numbers in Etruscan and Iberian locales, and they are perhaps to be associated with the Phoenician expansion in the Mediterranean of the first millennium BCE (2). NOTES: 1. G. M. A. Hanfmann, “A Near Eastern Horseman,” Syria 38.3-4 (1961): 243-55. 2. For Etruscan bronze horsemen, see for example G. Zampiere and B. Lavarone, eds., Bronzi antichi del Museo Archeologico di Padova, exh. cat. (Rome, 2000) nos. 33-53. For Iberian bronzes, see for example M. Tarradell, Iberian Art (New York, 1978) nos. 38-39, 73-74, and 76-77. Marian Feldman