Pages: 215-228

The article analyzes battle images on the jewellery from the Solokha barrow: a comb, a gorytos overlay and a vessel with scenes of heroic hunting of Scythian warriors. The author discusses these metalwork artifacts considered to be objects of the Graeco-Scythian art in terms of their dual cultural attribution. The artistic features of the objects in question characterized in the paper include the arrangement of composition through numerical patterns, “duplication” of scenes where people act with those involving animals, and the use of iconographic patterns of the Greek art (military posture of “lunge”, etc.) to create the images of fighting Scythian characters. The compositional and iconographic analogies for the analyzed images in Greek vase painting are given, mainly based on the subjects of the Trojan epic, amazonomachy, and centauromachy. An attempt is made to identify compositional elements and artistic motives that correspond to the artistic perception and world view of the Scythian owners of precious objects from Solokha. The author assumes that clear structure and rhythm of the composition, the use of anthropomorphic-zoomorphic “doublets” and other features could meet the artistic demand of the Scythians.

Keywords: North Black Sea region, Scythian period, Graeco-Scythian art, battle scenes, Solokha barrow, Greek vase painting, composition, iconography

Information about author:

Lyubov Ermolenko (Kemerovo, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Kemerovo State University. Krasnaya St., 6, Kemerovo, 650000, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]