Getty Museum

Foot from a Thymiaterion (Incense-Burner)

Date

500–450 B.C.

Medium

Bronze

Culture

Etruscan

Department

Implements

Institution

Getty Museum

This foot was one of three that once supported an incense-burner (thymiaterion), the sheet bronze walls of which have not survived. It consists of a feline paw resting on a square base. At its upper end the paw merges into a knobbed swelling flanked at the top by two outspread wings with modelled feathers. Astride the paw is a naked youth leaning back on his elbows and resting his hands on his hips. He wears a fillet decorated with three rosettes on his head, beneath which a fringe of hair hangs over his forehead, while at the back a mass of long locks falls on either side of the wings. In the angle at the back of the foot is a hooked bracket which originally supported one corner of the pyramidal base of the thymiaterion; a fragment of its wall still adheres to the rivet behind the right wing. Similar figures formed the decorative feet on cistae (cosmetic boxes) and candelabra.

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