Getty Museum

Relief with Two Maenads

Date

350–300 B.C.

Medium

Terracotta with foil gilding and polychromy (pink)

Culture

Greek (South Italian, Tarantine)

Department

Sculpture

Institution

Getty Museum

Two maenads recline on a rocky base, bracketed at the ends by two curling acanthus plants. The figure on the left, with torso seen frontally and legs crossed in three-quarter view, embraces her companion; she lifts a large tympanon, which touches the plant. She wears a chiton belted beneath her breasts, and a himation softly draped over her legs. The maenad on the right, slightly foreshortened, holds a thyrsus in her lap and is dressed similarly. Both wear their hair loosely pulled back. The relief was mold-made with hand-finished details, including gilding applied to the figures and pink pigment applied to the back of the relief. In the middle of the lower edge is a hole for attachment to a wooden sarcophagus or head of a kline (bed), which were used in lavish Tarentine funerary rites in the second half of the fourth century B.C.

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