Museums

Eagle-Rape

The Spyros and Eurydice Costopoulos Gallery lies along the Met’s west façade, just south of the newly renovated Greek and Roman Galleries. It contains Greek art of the 4th Century B.C., a period that saw Greece grow from a collection of sparring city-states into an empire stretching to India.

Among the Costopolous’ treasures is a row of six marble heads, long since cleaved from their bodies. The forlorn faces are broken and smooth and stained. There’s a shiny gilt scabbard and three marble stele, or grave markers, all of which feature bas-relief portraits of the deceased shaking hands with someone in their family. Particularly moving is the veiled face of a statue representing mourning. Nothing like some drapery executed in stone, am I right? Right? Yeah.

The gallery’s clear stars are its smallest artifacts. They’re so unassuming I overlooked them on my first pass through the room. It was only on revisiting yesterday that I caught them: the most wonderful god-damned earrings I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some beauties.

Each of the earrings is a tiny scene showing Ganymede being spirited away to Mt. Olympus by Zeus in the form of an eagle (the gods had decided to kidnap him because A. they needed a bartender and B. he was GORGEOUS).

What’s remarkable here is not just the craftsmanship—though the detail is impressive, in Zeus’s feathers especially. But more notable to my eye is the mood of the tiny pieces, the tenderness that the man and the animal show each other. In Rembrandt’s formulation, the abduction of Ganymede was a rape, á la Leda and the Swan (Leda was also violated by Zeus, who, in addition to his penchant for serial rape, was a bestiality enthusiast. Take that, The Internet! Hellenic mythos makes you look staid by comparison!)

But in these Macedonian earrings, the two figures have an affinity. Ganymede slings an arm above his head, delicately encircling the neck of the disguised Zeus, whose talon grips the youth’s other hand. They look like lovers. Miniature, solid-gold, interspecies rape-lovers.

The Met is so fucking weird and great and I suggest you go immediately.

The Spyros and Euridice Costopolous Gallery

Highlight: The Ganymeade Earrings

Memorable quote: “Marsyas was so proficient at playing the double-flute that he challenged the god Apollo himself to a contest. Apollo agreed on the condition that the victor could do as he pleased to the vanquished, and after winning, he had Marsyas flayed alive by a Scythian slave.” From the text for exhibit 12.139.4a.b.

Next week: Nobody at the Met knows what’s in the Met. And, by overwhelming popular demand, an in-depth look at the dining room commissioned by John Stuart, third Earl of Bute. Try not to pee in your pants with excitement!!!

Tags: classical antiquity, jewelry, met