Roman, Imperial Period, ca. 1st to 3rd century CE. A tinned bronze panel - thin enough that this style is sometimes referred to as a bronze foil ornament - decorated with a stamped and lightly incised motif that has been left untinned, creating an exposed bronze decoration with an undecorated, shiny, tinned surface highlighting it. This has now aged to have a mottled turquoise bronze patina. This panel features a standing woman, the goddess Fortuna. She was one of the most common deities worshipped in ancient Rome, and she is often depicted, as she is here, with her cornucopia, in order to bring prosperity and luck. Size: 1.95" W x 3.05" H (5 cm x 7.7 cm); 4.7" H (11.9 cm) on included custom stand.
What might have been the purpose of the bronze panel this was part of? We know that similar items were used to decorate wood items, like the sides of chariots and chests. For example, a tomb at Paphos contained several pieces of bronze foil on their own, found on a bench at the right foot of the skeletal remains of the tomb's inhabitant. The authors of the report on that excavation speculated that the foil had covered a wooden box for holding money that had disintegrated. Another way it may have been used was decoration on a scabbard.
Provenance: private New Jersey, USA collection; ex-Adam Murry collection, Bristol, UK
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#144592
Condition
Piece is a fragment with some losses around the peripheries and one tear near the neck of Fortuna. Excellent preservation of tinning and of motifs.