The metal vessel was likely used as a funerary urn. It was found together with another vessel, shaped like a shell and used as a lid for the urn, in a landslide along the road within the Yahorlyk Nature Reserve, Dubăsari District. The village of Yahorlyk is located at the mouth of the stream of the same name, a left tributary of the Dniester River. The vessel belongs to the Hemmoo type (or Eggers 63) and is a rare find in the late ancient sites of the 2nd-3rd centuries AD. Researchers consider this type of vessel to be of Italic, Gallo-Italic, or Mediterranean origin, frequently used as a funerary urn or burial inventory by the Bastarnae. Upon discovery, the vessel was reportedly filled with "earth and burnt bones."
The vessel was found together with a brass sheet vessel that had undulated or fluted walls. It has a height of 14.9 cm (without the base ring). The diameter of the vessel's body is 19.5 cm, and the total height is 16.2 cm. The rim of the vessel flares outward with a diameter of 20.5 cm. The vessel is made from thin brass sheet, only 0.1 cm thick. The upper part of the vessel is modestly ornamented. The middle of the rim, on the exterior, has a shallow horizontal line incised. The transition from the rim to the body is marked by a wide groove, 0.3 cm in width. From this groove, the rim thickens to 0.25 cm. On the upper part of the rim, on two symmetrically placed sides, semicircular handles with stepped bases were cut out. The handles are 2.2 cm in height and 5.1 cm in width. Including the "steps" at the base, the handles are 6.1 cm wide. In the middle of each handle, a circular elongated hole was made for the attachment of a handle, measuring 1.2 x 1.5 cm.
The ornamentation on the upper part of the vessel's body consists of two bands, each formed by two parallel incised lines, spaced 0.2 to 0.4 cm apart. The interval between the two bands is 0.9 cm. The vessel's handle is semicircular, mobile, fairly thick, rectangular in cross-section (0.8 x 0.9 cm), and made from a rounded brass bar. The ends of the handle are thinned to 0.6 cm and widened to 0.9 cm over a length of 2.6 cm, resembling bird heads. On the median part of the bar, incised marks resembling Roman numerals IX and XI are present. The bottom of the vessel was made from a separate brass sheet, worked by pressing on a lathe. Evidence of this process is the indentation from the lathe's fixing rod, preserved in the central part of the vessel's bottom. Surrounding this indentation is an ornament consisting of two bands of concentric lines, with diameters of 1.8 cm and 5.9 cm, respectively. The lower part of the vessel is raised and rests on a ringed base, formed by shaping the vessel's walls and bending the piece that formed the actual bottom. This base has a diameter of 8.7 cm.
For the North-West Pontic and East-Carpathian regions, several scattered sites or points where fragments of metal vessels were discovered, used as funerary inventory or urns, should be mentioned. These include discoveries from the funerary complexes of flat necropolises dated to the first centuries AD, at Hansca-Lutăria II and Dănceni-Ialoveni. Here, excavations identified noble graves with fragments of bronze vessels with metal handles, similar to the vessel from Yahorlyk.
Cloisonné enamels from the former collection Alexander Zwenigorodsky and a new book by Ljudmila Pekarska, Jewellery of Princely Kiev. The Kiev Hoards in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Related Material
Tyragetia, serie nouă, vol. IX [XXIV], nr. 2, Istorie. Muzeologie Chișinău, 2015
Abstract
In 2011, a monograph long anticipated by art historians with an expertise in Old Russian and Byzantine art was published by Ljudmila Pekarska. The main subject of the monograph - the history of a hoard of jewellery found in Kiev in 1906, and as luck would have it is today divided between the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The author, however, did not limit her study to the analysis of objects from this hoard. She used an extensive amount of comparative materials from collections in many Western, Ukrainian, and Russian museums. L. Pekarska focuses mainly on the cloisonné enamels, an impressive example of exquisite medieval luxury. Welcoming the publication of this book, and being interested in the research, as well as its author, I do not envy the hard work that it would take for a person to write a scholarly review on this publication. The book contains so many specific features, so many politicized statements, so many altered facts that an unprepared reader, and even a professional, will not always be able to understand these "sleights of hand". For this reason, I chose only three pages from the book of Ljudmila Pekarska that discuss a collection of cloisonné enamels of Alexandr Zvenigorodsky and its fate (now almost the entire collection is kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). I hope that my article will help the reader in understanding the nuances of L. Pekarska's book and, besides that, offers the reader more detailed information about the unique collection of Zvenigorodsky and the reasons it is now in Western museums. In this article, the author includes biographical facts about Alexander Zvenigorodsky; it shines a light on the history of Zvenigorodsky's ownership of the cloisonné enamels, and criminal origin of the collection taken from Georgian monasteries. Also included is information on the publication of the collection by its owner - the famous book issued in three languages in 200 copies each: in Russian, in German, and in French. The book has long since become a rare example of the highest quality of printing and refined luxury. A considerable attention is paid to the fate of the collection after the death of its owner; the reason it was secretly sold to John Pierpont Morgan; a negative role in this sale of the infamous collector Michail Botkin. A seemingly private matter about Zvenigorodsky's collection of enamels has raised numerous problems of ethical, methodological, and, in some degree, even cultural and political nature.
List of illustrations: Photo 1. Cover of Ljudmila Pekarska's book. Photo 2. Alexander Zvenigorodsky. Photo 3. Nikodim Kondakov. Photo 4. Title page of N. Kondakov's book on Zvenigorodsky's collection. Photo 5. Byzantine cloisonné medallions from the former collection of Alexander Zvenigorodsky, end of the 10th - early 12th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo 6. Michail Botkin. Photo 7. John Pierpont Morgan.
Юрий А. Пятницкий
Old Russian art on the shores of Seine. Some notes on the "Holy Russia: Russian Art from the beginning to the times of Peter the Great" exhibition in the Louvre in 2010
Tyragetia, serie nouă, vol. VI [XXI], nr. 2, Istorie. Muzeologie
Юрий А. Пятницкий
Coptic textile from Count Alexey Bobrinsky's collection in the State Hermitage: the history of one mistake
Tyragetia, serie nouă, vol. X [XXV], nr. 2, Istorie. Muzeologie
Андрей Крупенко, Юрий А. Пятницкий
Restoration and attribution of The Virgin of Tenderness (a new acquisition of the Byzantine collection of the Hermitage Museum)
Tyragetia, serie nouă, vol. X [XXV], nr. 2, Istorie. Muzeologie
Всеволод Образцов, Юрий А. Пятницкий
Holy images on blades: unique swords from the State Hermitage Museum (preliminary publication)
Tyragetia, serie nouă, vol. VII [XXII], nr. 2, Istorie. Muzeologie
The metal vessel was likely used as a funerary urn. It was found together with another vessel, shaped like a shell and used as a lid for the urn, in a landslide along the road within the Yahorlyk Nature Reserve, Dubăsari District. The village of Yahorlyk is located at the mouth of the stream of the same name, a left tributary of the Dniester River...
The National Museum of History of Moldova takes place among the most significant museum institutions of the Republic of Moldova, in terms of both its collection and scientific reputation.
The National Museum of History of Moldova takes place among the most significant museum institutions of the Republic of Moldova, in terms of both its collection and scientific reputation.
The National Museum of History of Moldova takes place among the most significant museum institutions of the Republic of Moldova, in terms of both its collection and scientific reputation.
The vessel was found together with a brass sheet vessel that had undulated or fluted walls. It has a height of 14.9 cm (without the base ring). The diameter of the vessel's body is 19.5 cm, and the total height is 16.2 cm. The rim of the vessel flares outward with a diameter of 20.5 cm. The vessel is made from thin brass sheet, only 0.1 cm thick. The upper part of the vessel is modestly ornamented. The middle of the rim, on the exterior, has a shallow horizontal line incised. The transition from the rim to the body is marked by a wide groove, 0.3 cm in width. From this groove, the rim thickens to 0.25 cm. On the upper part of the rim, on two symmetrically placed sides, semicircular handles with stepped bases were cut out. The handles are 2.2 cm in height and 5.1 cm in width. Including the "steps" at the base, the handles are 6.1 cm wide. In the middle of each handle, a circular elongated hole was made for the attachment of a handle, measuring 1.2 x 1.5 cm.
31 August 1989 St., 121 A, MD 2012, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova
