More Strong Wimmin: Part IV

This is the fourth in a series of articles on strong wimmin at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This month, the writer explores the Thomas L. Fawick Collection and Ancient Near Eastern Art.

By Bev Stamp

Immediately after its acquisition, the Thomas L. Fawick Collection was exhibited in the Special Exhibitions area, near the north entrance of the museum. After March 9, however, the works were moved to different areas of the museum, depending on the style of the painting and sculpture. Three of the ten works depict a positive image of wimmin. Bacchante, by Jean-Baptiste Clesinger (called Auguste), is a French work completed in 1863. The white marble statue is about three feet high. It depicts a very realistic cheerful womon with flowers in her hair and a cup in her hand.

The Bacchantes, or Maenads, unlike the gods of Olympus, had no temples. They went to the wilderness to worship, "to the wildest mountains, the deepest forests, as if they kept to the customs of an ancient time before men had thought of building houses for their gods. They went out of the dusty, crowded city, back to the clean purity of the untrodden hills and woodlands. There Dionysus gave them food and drink: herbs and berries and the milk of the wild goat. Their beds were on the soft meadow grass, under the thick-leaved trees, where the pine needles fall year after year. They woke to a sense of peace and heavenly freshness; they bathed in a clear brook. There was much that was lovely, good, and freeing in this worship under the open sky and the ecstasy of joy it brought in the wild beauty of the world."

The close ties between wimmin and nature and outdoor worship certainly allude to a former time when the Mother Goddess reigned supreme and wimmin were revered. During the time of the Olympic Pantheon, reverence for the Mother Goddess had almost vanished. That traces of Goddess-worship were still practiced in classical times is shown in the references to the "customs of the ancient time" in the Bacchante myth.

This work is now placed in the 19th Century French collection (Room 24).

Dominating the exhibition room was Joseph Cheret's life-size bronze statue of a womon awakening, entitled Dawn. Completed in 1883, this work is

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now in the same area of the museum as Bacchante. Like works we have seen before, such as The Kiss. of Peace and Justice, Persephone (as the maiden. of Spring), Charity, The Triumph of the Holy Sacrament over Ignorance, and Blindness and the Nature Fountain at the front of the museum, this statue also represents womon as virtue. Dawn represents womon as a vital component of Nature: the awakening or beginning of a new day. Cheret portrays her stretch-ing and reaching upward with her arms. Small angels above her are removing a diaphanous wrap from her face. This work is especially captivating and further strengthens the Nature/Womon relationship.

now placed in Room 20 with other baroque arı. A statue of Venus is in the center of a garden fountain amidst a showy atmosphere of vines and flowers. A gargoyle, characteristic of many baroque works, appears in the foreground. Unlike the serious baroque drama seen in other works of this period, Boucher uses light-hearted themes and curvilinear forms.

Ancient Near Eastern art in Room 2 is represented by Persian Art. "The Iranians [Persians] are an offshoot of the Indo-European race which is known as Aryan or 'noble'. The Aryans undoubtedly came from southern Russia by way of the Caucases or Dardanelles. The religion of the region is complex due to the mingling of Assyro-Babylonian and Aryan beliefs and also due to the great change it underwent during. three successive dynasties." The first was the Achaemenian (558-330 B.C.) and the last was the Sassanian (224-729 A.D.).

The first work considered is the Silver Rhyton: The Angel Drvaspa of the period 500-600 A.D. The Angel Drvaspa, whose name means "she who keeps horses, "was worshipped as the protector of flocks and horses. She is also known as Gosorun, "soul of the bull". According to ancient Zoroastrian texts (Zoroaster the prophet lived from 660-583 B.C.), Drvaspa rose, as the soul, out of the body of the primeval ox slaughtered by the evil demon. The work. of art in the museum portrays this story. Drvaspa is rising from the head of the ox. She is very finely adorned and her large star-shaped earrings are especially beautiful.

In the same case is the very captivating Anahita Rhyton of partially gilt silver, belonging to the Sassanian period (400-500 A.D.). This 10-inch vase-shaped vessel portrays Anahita holding four different sets of symbols which relate to her attributes as Goddess of Water, Vegetation, Agriculture, and Fertility The symbols shown are a pail and a bird, a vine and a flower, a dog and a bowl of fruit, and a child and a pomegranate. The vessel is suspended in the case so it is possible to walk around the case and view her in each of her four attributes.

Anahita, or Goddess of Sacred Waters, is closely identified with Ishtar, the Great Goddess of Babylonia. Merlin Stone, in her book When God Was a Woman, refers to her as one of the "manynamed Divine Ancestress", along with Ashtoreth (Hebrew), Astarte (Phoenicia), Ishtar (Babylonia), Isis (Egypt), and Hathor (Egypt).

Anahita was widely worshipped in Achaemenian times (558-330 B.C.). Under the Hellenistic name of Anaitis, she later acquired considerable popularity throughout Asia Minor and the Occident; her reappearance in Sassanian times-as seen in the Anahita Rhyton-may have been the result of foreign influence.

"As Queen of Heaven, her dwelling place was said to be among the stars and she was sometimes associated with the planet Venus. Ás Earth Mother, she was the Goddess of Springs and Rivers, and her life-giving waters ensured fertility. Anahita was usually shown richly arrayed in a crown of gold adorned with stars, wearing earrings, bracelets, a gold collar and gold shoes....Although Iranian texts as late as the fourth century A.D. state that she was in charge of the universe, she was supposedly 'given' this task by the god who created her. This suggests that her power, as one of the few goddesses in this male-dominated Persian religion, was somewhat less than that of Ishtar, whose power was inherent rather than given to her."'*

Part V of Strong Wimmin will consist of a study of the Egyptian Collection of the Art Museum.

Footnotes:

The last work, Fountain of Venus, is a baroque oil painting by Francois Boucher completed in 1756, Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, p. 106.

Hamilton, Edith, Mythology, p. 57.

New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, p. 310.