Getty Museum

Belt Plaque

Date

700–600 B.C.

Medium

Silver and bronze

Culture

Etruscan

Department

Jewelry

Institution

Getty Museum

A rectangular plaque forming half of a belt clasp, the relief consists of a silver sheet, the edges of which are folded and crimped over a bronze core. The repoussé decoration features a despotes theron (“Master of the Animals”) between youths and rampant winged felines. The despotes wears a chitoniskos and stands with his torso frontal and head and legs in profile to the left. Between his legs is a “tree of life.” He holds the felines’ front paw, while the youths grasp their wing and curling tail. This archetypal motif has a long history in Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Aegean Bronze Age art. Much rarer than the female divinity subduing animals, the image of a male dominating birds, horses, or hybrid creatures was adopted in Etruria by the eighth century B.C. The artisan, likely from a workshop in Cerveteri, incorporated mythical imagery that was introduced in Etruria through imported Phoenician bowls, which are embossed with bands of eastern-inspired scenes. The flanking heroes are usually identified as the Dioskouroi, Castor and Pollux, known in Etruria as Tinas Cliniar, the sons of Tinia.

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