195 - A Corinthian Bronze Helmet

A Corinthian Bronze Helmet Circa 5th Century B.C. Height 27 cm (10 5/8 inches). Property from a Pacific Northwest Collection Length 27 cm (10 5/8 inches). Height with stand 42 cm (16 1/2 inches). Provenance: Private Collection, Germany, acquired in the 1980s. Private Collection, Canada, acquired in 2004. Ward Gallery, New York; where acquired by the present owner, 29 March 2007. This Corinthian helmet, raised from a single sheet of bronze, presents the type in its late and fully developed form. The ovoid crown, gently peaked, is set off from the walls below by a pronounced step that runs from the brow around to the nape. At the back, the neck guard flares outward to meet the cheekpieces at a shallow angle. The face is rendered with clarity and restraint: almond-shaped eye openings sit beneath incised double brows that converge in a point above the long nose guard, its tip slightly flared. The cheekpieces sweep downward until they nearly meet, leaving only a narrow opening at the front, and each pointed tip is pierced, probably to secure a chin strap. A blue-green patina, pitted and crusted with red-brown, gives the surface considerable depth while leaving the profile crisp and legible. The Greeks knew the form by this name. Herodotus, describing a festival among the Auseans of Libya, records that each year the fairest maiden was dressed in “a Corinthian helmet and Greek panoply” and driven around a lake in a chariot (Herodotus, Histories 4.180). The type appeared at the end of the eighth century B.C. and was refined over the centuries that followed. The great number of examples dedicated at Olympia has made that development unusually well understood. The step dividing crown from walls belongs to its later phase, a design A.H. Jackson places from around 530 B.C. Here it is paired, as on many helmets of the period, with lengthened cheekpieces. Such helmets were bound up with kleos, the glory that outlives the warrior who wins it. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus promised the man who fell among the front fighters that his name and fame would never perish (Tyrtaeus, fr. 12). At Olympia that promise took material form. Helmets were dedicated to Zeus as spoils and thank-offerings, some inscribed with the names of those who gave them: the Argives on armor taken from Corinth, the people of Rhegion on a helmet won from the Locrians around 488-485 B.C., and the Athenian general Miltiades on a helmet very probably offered after Marathon. In the late sixth and fifth centuries, the Corinthian helmet also took on a second life in art. It is often shown pushed back onto the crown, the cheekpieces hanging and the face beneath exposed. On an Athenian red-figured cup of circa 510-500 B.C. in the British Museum, a winged youth lifting the body of Sarpedon wears his helmet tipped back. A marble warrior from the sanctuary of Aphaia on Aegina, circa 490 B.C., wears his raised. On the silver staters of Corinth, Athena wears hers uncrested. Art lifted the bronze to show the man; the present helmet keeps the face he showed the enemy. For a helmet of the same carinated form, see British Museum, inv. no. 1824,0407.32. For the development of the type and its dedication at Olympia, see H. Frielinghaus, Die Helme von Olympia, Berlin, 2011, pp. 41-45; and A.H. Jackson, “Argos’ Victory over Corinth,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 132 (2000), pp. 295-311.