Hand Mirror

470-450 BCE

Etruscan; probably Vulci

Found in women’s graves, bronze mirrors were luxurious personal possessions used in life and then buried with the dead for use in the afterlife. One side was highly polished; the other side was usually engraved with a mythic scene, such as this one, which shows the goddess Eos carrying the body of her son, Memnon, who was killed by the hero Achilles. The episode was taken from Homer’s The Iliad, the epic poem that narrates the Greek siege and eventual defeat of the city of Troy.

Status: On View, Gallery 151
Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium

Culture: Ancient Etruscan
Title: Hand Mirror
Place: Vulci (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 470 BCE–450 BCE
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: 16.8 × 15.1 × 0.7 cm (6 5/8 × 6 × 5/16 in.) (with tang)
Credit Line: Katherine K. Adler Memorial Fund
Reference Number: 1984.1341
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/103304/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report: 1984-85 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1985), pp. 54, 16 (ill.).
Richard De Puma, Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum, U.S.A. I: Midwestern Collections (Ames, 1987), p. 60, no. 41, figs. a-e.
Richard De Puma, “Etruscan Art” in Museum Studies: Ancient Art at The Art Institute of Chicago, vol. 20, no. 1 (1994), p. 58 (ill.), no. 37.
“CLEOPATRA; THE ANCIENT WORLD,” Computer program, 1997, The Art Institute of Chicago.
James Wood, Treasures from The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2000), p. 72 (ill.).
Classical Philology, vol. 95, no. 2 (April 2000), cover image.

Art Institute of Chicago, Myth and Legend in Classical Art, Gallery 101A, February 28, 1987 - August 26, 1987.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Human Figure in Greek and Roman Art: From the Permanent Collection (Part 2), Gallery 120A, January 13, 1989 - February 21, 1990.
Art Institute of Chicago, Ancient Art Galleries, Gallery 156, April 20, 1994 - February 6, 2012.
Art Institute of Chicago, Of Gods and Glamour: The Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, Gallery 152, November 11, 2012 - November 1, 2018 and March 30, 2023 - present.

R. Zeitz collection, London [according to note in curatorial object file]; sold to Michael Ward, Inc. New York by 1983 [excerpt from dealer catalog in curatorial object file]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1984.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.