EAGLE DEVOURING A HARE Ancient Rome, 1st - 3rd Century A.D. Bronze Height 6 cm Provenance - Private collection, Paris, France. 1970 - 1980. Condition Intact. Statuette cast in lost wax bronze, in round bulk, representing an eagle devouring a hare on a low square pedestal. The bird appears perched on a flat rock, with its wings folded on its back and its head facing forward. The plumage is represented by incising, with rounded feathers housing incised lines. The eye area is modeled with a higher relief, bringing expressiveness and liveliness to the animal. The hare's entrails emerge from its beak, arranged vertically with the hindquarters upwards. The legs of the prey are folded, as are the ears. The modeling of the piece is emphatic, based on simple lines, especially highlighting the elegant regular curve traced by the head and the hooked beak of the eagle. The hare is a compact figure, more easily understood in its lateral view, where the legs, head, ears, eyes and even the fur, suggested by short parallel strokes, are differentiated by incisions. In London there is a bronze votive statuette dedicated to Jupiter Dolichene, showing an eagle dominating a goat, with a laurel wreath in its beak (fig. 1). As in the case of the piece under study, it is a sculpture of very small format (just over 7 cm in height) modeled with a synthetic language of simple forms, well-defined volumes and details worked by incision. The image of the eagle defeating the hare, devouring it or holding it in its claws, was an emblem in Rome of martial victory and imperial power. The eagle is the relentless predator, defeating the agile but cowardly hare; the iconography therefore alludes to the excellence of the warrior, his certain victory and the defenselessness of his enemy. On the other hand, the eagle is the animal of Jupiter, so the image indicates that its bearer is under the protection of the king of the gods. It was an iconography especially used during the Flavian dynasty, in the second half of the first century A.D., and it will appear mainly decorating elements of defensive weaponry such as breastplates, helmets and greaves. It will also be a recurrent image in Roman armor (fig. 2). The motif of the confrontation between the eagle and the hare has its origins in Greece. The hare was for the Greeks an important sexual emblem, symbol of fertility and sexual desire and, therefore, associated with the goddess Aphrodite and the mythical-ritual cycle of Dionysus. The influence of the Greek religion in Rome will determine that this iconography also appears outside the military sphere, in objects related to other contexts, such as the Dionysian oscilla (fig. 3). Bibliography - HOLSCHER, T. The Language of Image in Roman Art. Cambridge University Press. 2004. - KLINE, L.K.; ELKINS, N.T. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography. Oxford University Press. 2022. Parallels Fig. 1 Votive statuette of an eagle with a goat. Roman Empire, s. II-III AD, bronze. British Museum, London, inv. 1868.0520.41. Fig. 2 Carving with an eagle devouring a hare. Caerleon (Wales), Roman Empire, c. I-III AD, jasper. National Roman Legion Museum, Caerleon (United Kingdom), inv. 81.79H/4.71. Fig. 3 Reverse of an oscillum with eagle and hare. Roman Empire, s. II-III AD, marble. British Museum, London, inv. 1805.0703.215. Notes: - The piece includes authenticity certificate. - The piece includes Spanish Export License. - The seller guarantees that he acquired this piece according to all national and international laws related to the ownership of cultural property. Provenance statement seen by Catawiki.