Etrusco-Italic Bronze Helmet - Negau / Vetulonic Type

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Exceptional Day 1: Antiquities & Asian Art

By Artemis Gallery

Sep 26, 2019

Set Reminder 2019-09-26 10:00:00 2019-09-26 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Exceptional Day 1: Antiquities & Asian Art https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/exceptional-day-1-antiquities-asian-art-4437
Day 1 of an important 2-day auction featuring exceptional, museum-worthy examples of Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Viking, Russian, Near Eastern, as well as Asian Art from China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and India. Artemis Gallery info@artemisgallery.com

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• Lot Description
  Classical World, Italic, Etruscan, ca. 400 to 350 BCE. A bronze helmet, a variant of the Negau type, a regional Italian style with a characteristically conical shape. The tall, capped form resolves in a concave neck with a pronounced brim. It once would have been decorated with attachments and feathers, as similar known examples demonstrate. Time has given it a beautiful mottled turquoise patina with flashes of the original bronze color. The Negau type (also known as the Vetulonic type) helmet is named for the village in northeastern Slovenia (now called Zenjak) where such helmets were initially found. Fascinatingly, although the helmets were produced during the time period stated above, at least 26 were still in use in Negau around 50 BCE - but by then, they belonged to priests, not the soldiers for whom they were originally made! Size: 8.8" W x 8.8" H (22.4 cm x 22.4 cm); 15.4" H (39.1 cm) on included custom stand.
  
  Helmets of this style are known for their tall, conical form, sometimes with a pronounced crest, other times smoothed like this example. They have a protruding rim with a deep groove just above it. Inscriptions found on many examples of these helmets - such as the ones indicating that they were used by priests at Negau, and the one on this example at the British Museum (catalogue number 1823,0610.1) that seems to indicate it was captured in battle and given as an offering to Zeus by a Greek soldier - give us an idea of their importance not just as armor. Their distinctive shape represented the ferocity and might of the Etruscan army. Memories of these soldiers lived on for centuries after the Etruscan metalsmiths stopped producing them, as evidenced by an eastern Hungarian Celtic tetradrachm (ca. 2nd century BCE) that depicts a horseman wearing one of these helmets and holding a torc, a symbol of power.
  
  Cf. a pilos helmet in Berlin, illustrated in Antikenmuseum Berlin (Berlin, 1988), no. 1 on pp. 80-81. For drawings of helmets with feather decoration, see John Warry, "Warfare in the Classical World" (Dallas, 2001), pp. 103 & 109; for a discussion of the Negau helmet type, see "Antike Helme" (Mainz, 1988), pp. 243-270.
  
  See another Negau type helmet at the Reading Public Museum, England, catalogue number 1955.3.1.
  
  Provenance: private J.H. collection, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
  
  All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
  
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  #149653

  Condition

  Approximately 1/4 new material, as shown in the included X-ray images. Restoration is expertly done and the piece appears intact. With nice turquoise green patina.
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