Art Institute of Chicago

Hand Mirror

Etruscan; probably Vulci

Date

470-450 BCE

Medium

Bronze

Culture

Vulci

Department

Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Found in women’s graves, bronze mirrors were luxurious personal possessions used in life and then buried with the dead for use in the afterlife. One side was highly polished; the other side was usually engraved with a mythic scene, such as this one, which shows the goddess Eos carrying the body of her son, Memnon, who was killed by the hero Achilles. The episode was taken from Homer’s The Iliad, the epic poem that narrates the Greek siege and eventual defeat of the city of Troy.

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