Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Centaurs in Ancient Art

Paul V.C. Baur - Centaurs in Ancient Art: The Archaic Period (1912)

Open Library direct link 
Open Library main page

The author catalogs types of centaurs from earliest times to about 480 BC as found in various vases, plates, wares, architectural reliefs and so forth.  It's a scholarly work that really is basically a list rather than a synthesis of what he's found.  One sample (p66):  "On shoulder, a female figure in long chiton and himation which flutters behind her is piercing with her spear in uplifted r. the body of a centaur stumbling to l., with branch over l. shoulder and r. hand uplifted in supplication."  There aren't as many illustrations as I'd like to see and most are fairly small.

Baur (1872-1951) was a Cincinnati native, educated in Heidelburg and worked at Yale as curator of classical archaeology from 1919 to 1940 (retirement).