Hellenistic Silver Plate with a Nereid Riding a Sea-Monster

A Hellenistic silver plate with a Nereid (sea nymph) riding a sea-monster. The Nereid is portrayed riding backward, turning her face to the right and tenderly embracing the sea creature with the right arm. She is naked from the legs upward, and wears armbands and earrings. Beautiful drapery covers her lower body, richly folded to reveal the buttock. Her hair is arranged in the quintessentially Hellenistic Melonenfrisur (literally, 'melon-shaped hairstyle'), modelled in ridges gathered in an elegant bun. Over her head we can see a velificatio, a billowing garment used to frame supernatural creatures and often associated with sea creatures such as the Nereids. The velificatio gives an impression of movement and sacrality to the epiphany of the central figure. The sea- monster ridden by the Nereid has the upper body of a horse and lower body of a marine creature, with fins and a long tail. The lower part of the plate is decorated with a stylised representation of the sea, with numerous waves creating a dense pattern.

The back of the plate is decorated with an array of elongated buds and darts, with the buds radiating from a central disc. A particularly close iconographic comparable is a silver plate with details in gold preserved at the Archaeological Museum of Taranto (n. 22429), dated to the Third Century BC.

References: a close parallel can be found in Taranto (Museo archeologico nazionale di Taranto 22429).

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