Brazier

Incomplete and able to be taken apart, this unique brazier was discovered as seven separate elements during the excavation of a Byzantine monastery transformed into a residence by the Ummayads. Buried with items in bronze and other materials (including part of a steatite lamp), it was doubtless entombed by an earthquake in the second half of the eighth century.

This is one of the rare Islamic pieces cast using the lost wax system, invented in Antiquity. It is also one of the few surviving examples of Ummayad bronze, with several ewers of the "Marwan II" type. Only one side is complete, but the brazier was square, with a decorative female figure at each corner. Griffons or eagles perched on small wheels serve as feet. This shape, perhaps from the Late Roman Empire, is to be found in the arts of Islam, in 10th-century Spain[1] and in Mameluke Egypt.[2] In a mid-thirteenth century miniature from Mosul, in Iraq, a prince is shown waiting for the kebabs a servant is cooking on a similar brazier.[3] In all these cases, however, only the square shape is comparable, for the ornamentation presents significant variations.

A number of different influences can be identified here. The feet are reminiscent of the zoomorphic feet on Sassanid furniture[4] and, going further back in time, reliefs from Assyria and Pharaonic Egypt, in which the furniture depicted has the paws of a lion or the hoofs of a bull. The "Empire Style" born after Napoleon's Egyptian campaign drew on the same source of inspiration. The six niches that orchestrate this markedly architectural ornamentation are a legacy of ancient art and are found not only in Ummayad architecture but also throughout the Mediterranean world. The stylisation of the capitals and the motif of the shell, alternatively set within a semicircle and a triangle, echoes Visigoth,[5] Coptic[6] and Islamic ornamentation – a well-rim at Qasr al-Hallabat, a gateway at Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi – found on buildings and funeral stelae.

The arcade scenes come from Greco-Roman mythology. At both ends is Hercules, identifiable by his club; in between are four couples making love and portrayed in a Dionysiac style reinforced by the presence of a cat, one of the attributes of the god of wine. Similar scenes are common on Coptic fabrics. Hercules's seated posture and the canon of figures may hark back to Indian art, but the figures themselves suggest those of Qusayr Amra, said to represent the ideals of Arab poets from the earliest period of Islam, among them ‘Umar ibn Abi Rabi‘a (643–711).

The in-the-round figures of naked women are reminiscent of the silver cups of Sassanid Iran. Their rich jewellery is also evocative of the figures of Khirbat al-Mafjar, but above all they suggest the canons of statuettes of Coptic bronzes used on furniture.[7] Rare in the Islamic world, sculpture in the round is mostly confined to animals, although we do find occasional stucco, bronze or ceramic figures. Conversely three-dimensional sculpture is frequent in the ancient and Christian worlds.

Three of the "dancers" are holding out a bird, but the last of them proffers a pomegranate, a motif recurring on the cornice and the extrados of the arches. Associated with fertility in many cultures, the pomegranate symbolises the female breasts in Persian poetry; here it would seem to echo the lovemaking scenes and so add to the overall visual coherency.

[2] Brazier, Egypt, second half thirteenth centry, cast and encrusted bronze, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 91.1.540.

[3] "Scenes of Court Life", Book of Antidotes, Mosul ?, mid-thireenth century, Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, AF 10, fol. 1r.

[4] Foot of a piece of furniture in the form of a protome of a griffon, Iran, fifth–seventeenth century, bronze, AO 22138.

[5] Visigoth chancel, Mérida, Visigoth Period, marble.

[6] Funeral stela, Egypt, Byzantine era, limestone, Cairo, Coptic Museum, 8703.

[7] Candelabrum, Luxor, fourth–fifth century, bronze, St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, 10581.