GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Villanovan horse bits have been recovered from several tombs in northern and central Italy. Found in both male and female burials, these objects indicate the affluent social position of those who could afford horses and horse-drawn transportation. The bits are often found in pairs, and occasionally in context with wagon or chariot parts, suggesting that these ornate devices were made in pairs for a team of horses and not just for an individual horse. A horse bit nearly identical to the one discussed here is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It is analogous in nearly every detail except that the horses' manes are not scalloped. Neither of these two bits has a known provenance, but whether or not they were made for the same team of horses, it sees likely they were crafted in the same workshop.
Discoveries of many bronze horse-bits in Villanovan burials suggest an increasing use of horses, which had probably been brought in by invaders from the North, and the possibility that there may have developed an aristocratic class of horse owners. Bits like these included in burials indicated either pride of ownership, or the belief that man would need to control a horse in the next world.
Adapted from
- Anne R. Bromberg, and Karl Kilinski II, Gods, Men, and Heroes: Ancient Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 83.
- Dallas Museum of Fine Arts Newsletter, April 1970.
NOTES
- Notes from visit of 24 April 1987 with Arielle Kozloff and Carlos Picon:
of this piece: Arielle said there were a tremendous number of fakes, and that the dangling parts and their details look very murky. There was no evidence of cuprite, and this was not the type of thing she would buy for Cleveland. She would have Beale look at it.
- The name Villanovan derives from a burial site near Bologna. These early inhabitants of the Po valley and Tuscany were the first to mine on a large scale; they thus produced many bronzes. The two-piece flexible horse bit was an invention of the early Iron Age nomadic peopls who moved outward from Central Asia into both Europe and the Far East. Rich examples like this one were left in tombs.
- A remarkable number of bronze horse bits have been recovered from Villanovan sites, and this example is a particularly elaborate one. The mouthpiece is jointed by interlocking rings. The high, curving cheekpieces terminate in ornamental knobs. A pair of horses placed muzzle to muzzle decorate the cheekpieces and could have served to check the headstall straps that probably passed through the space beneath their joined noses. The horses stand erect with ears alert, their hogged manes scalloped, and their tails anchored in the space behind their rear hooves. Extending from each cheekpiece and attached to the mouthpiece by interlocking rings is a mobile bar to the end of which the reins would have been fastened. Three stylized bird-shaped ornaments are mounted on each of these bars in a design that links each set together, tail to tail or tail to beak. Dangling on rings from each of the cheekpieces are four pairs of bird-headed pendants decorated on their outer faces and set back to back. These not only added to the decorative effect of the bit, but also jingled when the horse was moving.
- Bronze horse bits of the same period and functioning in a similar manner were produced in Luristan (western Persia) (1974.75). However, the cheekpieces of those bits are decorated with fantastic, winged creatures, positioned so that the bar of the mouthpiece passes over their bodies. They are quite different in decoration and style from the types of animals on the Villanovan examples. That cheekpieces decorated with animals are almost unknown in Greece would seem to exclude this otherwise acceptable intermediary as a source of influence.
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PROVENANCE
Until 1969: Elie Borowski, Basel, Switzerland [1]
From 1969: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Mrs. John Leddy Jones, purchased from above [2]
[1] See Acquisition Record in Collections Records Object File 1969.6
[2] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.
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General Description
Villanovan horse bits have been recovered from several tombs in northern and central Italy. Found in both male and female burials, these objects indicate the affluent social position of those who could afford horses and horse-drawn transportation. The bits are often found in pairs, and occasionally in context with wagon or chariot parts, suggesting that these ornate devices were made in pairs for a team of horses and not just for an individual horse. A horse bit nearly identical to the one discussed here is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It is analogous in nearly every detail except that the horses' manes are not scalloped. Neither of these two bits has a known provenance, but whether or not they were made for the same team of horses, it sees likely they were crafted in the same workshop.
Discoveries of many bronze horse-bits in Villanovan burials suggest an increasing use of horses, which had probably been brought in by invaders from the North, and the possibility that there may have developed an aristocratic class of horse owners. Bits like these included in burials indicated either pride of ownership, or the belief that man would need to control a horse in the next world.
Adapted from
- Anne R. Bromberg, and Karl Kilinski II, Gods, Men, and Heroes: Ancient Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 83.
- Dallas Museum of Fine Arts Newsletter, April 1970.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
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Notes
- Notes from visit of 24 April 1987 with Arielle Kozloff and Carlos Picon:
of this piece: Arielle said there were a tremendous number of fakes, and that the dangling parts and their details look very murky. There was no evidence of cuprite, and this was not the type of thing she would buy for Cleveland. She would have Beale look at it.
- The name Villanovan derives from a burial site near Bologna. These early inhabitants of the Po valley and Tuscany were the first to mine on a large scale; they thus produced many bronzes. The two-piece flexible horse bit was an invention of the early Iron Age nomadic peopls who moved outward from Central Asia into both Europe and the Far East. Rich examples like this one were left in tombs.
- A remarkable number of bronze horse bits have been recovered from Villanovan sites, and this example is a particularly elaborate one. The mouthpiece is jointed by interlocking rings. The high, curving cheekpieces terminate in ornamental knobs. A pair of horses placed muzzle to muzzle decorate the cheekpieces and could have served to check the headstall straps that probably passed through the space beneath their joined noses. The horses stand erect with ears alert, their hogged manes scalloped, and their tails anchored in the space behind their rear hooves. Extending from each cheekpiece and attached to the mouthpiece by interlocking rings is a mobile bar to the end of which the reins would have been fastened. Three stylized bird-shaped ornaments are mounted on each of these bars in a design that links each set together, tail to tail or tail to beak. Dangling on rings from each of the cheekpieces are four pairs of bird-headed pendants decorated on their outer faces and set back to back. These not only added to the decorative effect of the bit, but also jingled when the horse was moving.
- Bronze horse bits of the same period and functioning in a similar manner were produced in Luristan (western Persia) (1974.75). However, the cheekpieces of those bits are decorated with fantastic, winged creatures, positioned so that the bar of the mouthpiece passes over their bodies. They are quite different in decoration and style from the types of animals on the Villanovan examples. That cheekpieces decorated with animals are almost unknown in Greece would seem to exclude this otherwise acceptable intermediary as a source of influence.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
Until 1969: Elie Borowski, Basel, Switzerland [1]
From 1969: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Mrs. John Leddy Jones, purchased from above [2]
[1] See Acquisition Record in Collections Records Object File 1969.6
[2] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.
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