Queen of the Night Relief
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Queen of the Night Relief
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
The Queen of the Night Relief, Old Babylonian Empire, c. 1775 BC.
The Queen of the Night Relief, also known as the Burney Relief, is a high relief Babylonian terracota plaque depicting a goddess, nude, winged and with bird's talons who stands on two lions and is flanked by two owls. The composition as a whole is unique among works of art from Mesopotamia, even though many elements have interesting counterparts in other images from that time.
Pigment traces allow us to reconstruct its original coloration. The goddess was painted red overall. Her feathers and the owls' were colored red, black and white. The background of the plaque was black, as her hair and eyebrows and the lions' manes. The pubic triangle and the areola were accentuated in red pigment but not painted black. The lions' bodies were white. It is assumed (inferred from other illustrations of the same period and place) the horns of the headdress and part of the necklace were originally colored yellow, as the bracelets and rod-and-ring symbols. There is no yellow pigment anywhere to be found, though.
This plaque, dated it between 1800 and 1750 BC, is also special in many other ways. High relief was not so usual, and the brittleness and size of the composition (20 in × 15 in) makes its survival through almost 4000 years of history nothing short of a miracle.
Experts have been unable to determine whether it represents Lilith, Ishtar, or Ereshkigal (the first has more or less been ruled out). Even its authenticity has been questioned since it was discovered in the 1930s, but general opinion tends to support its genuineness.
More amazing statues, sculptures and carvings at https://weston-westmoreland.pixels.com/collections/statues+sculptures+carvings
Weston Westmoreland
Uploaded
April 14th, 2020
Statistics
Viewed 986 Times - Last Visitor from White Plains, NY on 03/28/2024 at 1:11 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet