548. Head Pendant

Condition

Fully preserved; some minor abrasions and nicks visible on the nose and chin.

Description

Rod-formed pendant rendering a female head. The head was formed with white glass wound around the tip of a rod covered with an organic mass; the hole has a maximum diameter of 0.6 cm and is clean inside, not retaining any remains of the core. This mass was pressed to form the nose. Then hair, eyes, ears, and mouth were applied, and finally a hanging loop. The hair is made of a thin layer of purple (seeming black) glass. The eyes are very large and are made of concentric overlapping disks of dark purple, white, and purple glass of gradually smaller diameter, allowing all to be visible. The ears and the mouth are made of glass that appears black, which is at its current condition totally impenetrable to light; its true color thus cannot be distinguished, but it was probably dark purple like the other features. A small loop for suspension, made of dark blue (seeming black) glass, is on top of the head. The same coil of glass continues as a wide band running across the forehead.

Some black, ferrous impurities are visible in the white mass of the pendant.

Comments and Comparanda

On Punic glass pendants in general, see comments on cat. 544. 2003.205 belongs to a subgroup of small-size female heads made in a very similar fashion to some male heads, being different because there is no beard (Seefried 1982, p. 19, plate III, type D.2.), which are dated between the middle of the third and the mid-first century BCE.

Provenance

By 1974–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his son, Gert Oppenländer, 1988; 1988–2003, Gert Oppenländer (Waiblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003

Bibliography

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 82, no. 222; p. 82, plate no. 222.

Exhibitions

Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)