First, a small (12 cm tall) bronze statuette of a seated god from Besançon. [b] The statuette is of a male youth seated upon a rock. The youth wears a belted tunic and chlamys. On his legs are tight breeches and on his feet are sandals. His right arm is projected outwards and in his right hand he holds a bunch of grapes against his right knee. Around the left hand, a serpent is coiled (whose head and tail are missing). The figure has a small, beardless head and a peculiarly long and wide neck. By contrast to the Amiens statuette, his hair is rather flat and his gaze is lowered. His right ear is elongated and very pointed. Unlike the Amiens statuette, the human left ear is fully visible. [5] : 98–100
Second, a medium-sized (45 cm (18 in) tall) stone statue from Lantilly. [c] The statue is of a nude human figure seated on a low seat. A large bunch of grapes sit between his knees. His left hand is placed on his thigh; his right hand, badly broken, seems to have held a serpent. The serpent coils around the seat and has a tail like that of a fish. Missing are the head of the serpent and, frustratingly, the head of the human figure. [d] A rectangular opening (8 by 5 cm (3.1 by 2.0 in)) has been carved in this figure's stomach, presumably intended to hold some object. [10] : 282–283 [11] : 49 [5] : 101
On the basis of these statues, Lucien Lerat has reconstructed the missing features of the Amiens statuette. In his left hand, where a hole shows something was once grasped, he held the body of a serpent; in his right hand (entirely missing), he held a bunch of grapes. [3] [5] : 100
Rigollot identified the Amiens statue as a representation of Midas (portrayed, mythologically, with the ears of a donkey), [1] [3] but this interpretation has not been sustained. [11] : 46 The crossed legs, association with the animal world, and heavy facial features allow the Amiens statuette to be identified as a Celtic representation of a god. [5] : 100 [4] : 193 [e] The attributes are not identifiable with those of any god in the Greco-Roman pantheon, so these three statues have been thought to represent a common Gaulish god. [4] : 193
The God of Amiens has been thought to most closely approach a native Gaulish representation of this god. [7] : 85 [5] : 100 The Besançon statuette shows heavy Greco-Roman influence (for example, in the rock seat, and the naturalistic treatment of the god's head). The treatment of the chlamys seems borrowed from representations of Hermes. The clumsy treatment of the attire on the Amiens god, by contrast, is much more characteristic of Gaulish art. [5] : 100 The Lantilly and Besançon gods are seated, whereas the Amiens god sits in the typical crossed legs of Celtic gods. [7] : 85–86 The nudity of the Lantilly god is a peculiarity; the Besançon and Amiens gods are both clothed. [7] : 86
Each individual attribute is not without parallels. A small, grotesque Gallo-Roman bronze head [f] has two animal ears, one pointed up and one pointed down. [13] : 5 Waldemar Deonna interprets the ear as that of a deer, and thus connects it with the God of Amiens. [7] : 8–9 However, Stéphanie Boucher thinks that its grotesque quality disqualifies it from religious interpretation. [14] : 178 Fernand Benoit has connected the snake and grape attributes with two bronze statuettes of Epona (one found in Reims, [g] the other in Maaseik [h] ). [9] : 121 Epona was a female Gallo-Roman god, revered as the protector of horses. [15] : 9 Both are of Epona sidesaddle with a bunch of grapes in her right hand. Only the Reims statue has a (fragmentary) serpent in its left hand; the attribute in the Maaseik statue's left hand is now missing. Neither have any indication of an animal ear. [9] : 121
However, the meaning of the attributes is far from clear. [5] : 101 The animal attribute is typical insofar as Celtic gods often link divinity with the natural world. [4] : 193 Deonna has suggested the god's animal ear arose from the anthropomorphisation of a prior animal god, [7] : 86 though Simone Deyts has tempered this by noting that we have no evidence of any such historical process taking place. [16] : 47–48 Deonna has also drawn on comparative evidence from Celtic as well as Christian contexts to argue that the statues are intended to represent a god whose animal ear allows him to hear the supplications of his worshippers. [7] : 98–99 Benoit has pointed out that these attributes could express a number of conceptual oppositions: the (mortal) human ear against the (divine) deer's ear; the deer (good) against the serpent (evil); the grape and animal ear (drunkenness) against the serpent (prudence). [9] : 123
This anomalous ear on the Amiens statuette is most commonly identified as a deer's ear, [i] but has also been thought to represent the ear of a horse, goat, donkey, wolf, or bull. [7] : 96–97 The divergence between its representation on the Besançon and Amiens statuettes has led Lerat to suggest that the choice of animal to model the deity's ear was arbitrary. [5] : 100
Some connection with the Celtic stag-god Cernunnos has been suggested, especially among those who interpret the animal ear as that of a deer, [5] : 101 but what the relationship between the two gods is supposed to be is unclear. [11] : 46 Boucher suggests the animal ear serves to heighten Cernunnos's non-human, and hence super-human, nature. [14] : 178 Cernunnos is associated with (horned) serpents. [11] : 14 Lerat points out that he is depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron grasping a serpent in his left hand. [5] : 100
In ancient Celtic and Gallo-Roman religion, Cerannus or Carnonos is a god depicted with antlers, seated cross-legged, and is associated with stags, horned serpents, dogs and bulls. He is usually shown holding or wearing a torc and sometimes holding a bag of coins and a cornucopia. He is believed to have originally been a Proto-Celtic God. There are more than fifty depictions and inscriptions referring to him, mainly in the north-eastern region of Gaul.
In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain, and the presence of foals in some sculptures. She and her horses might also have been leaders of the soul in the after-life ride, with later literary parallels in Rhiannon of the Mabinogion. The worship of Epona, "the sole Celtic divinity ultimately worshipped in Rome itself", as the patroness of cavalry, was widespread in the Roman Empire between the first and third centuries AD; this is unusual for a Celtic deity, most of whom were associated with specific localities.
In Gallo-Roman religion, Arduinna was the eponymous tutelary goddess of the Ardennes Forest and region, thought to be represented as a huntress riding a boar. Her cult originated in the Ardennes region of present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. She was identified with the Roman goddess Diana.
The Horned Serpent appears in the mythologies of many cultures including Native American peoples, European, and Near Eastern mythology. Details vary among cultures, with many of the stories associating the mystical figure with water, rain, lightning, thunder, and rebirth. Horned Serpents were major components of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of North American prehistory.
The Pillar of the Boatmen is a monumental Roman column erected in Lutetia in honour of Jupiter by the guild of boatmen in the 1st century AD. It is the oldest monument in Paris and is one of the earliest pieces of representational Gallo-Roman art to carry a written inscription.
Gallo-Roman religion is a fusion of the traditional religious practices of the Gauls, who were originally Celtic speakers, and the Roman and Hellenistic religions introduced to the region under Roman Imperial rule. It was the result of selective acculturation.
Lenus was a Celtic healing god worshipped mainly in eastern Gaul, where he was almost always identified with the Roman god Mars.
Lantilly is a commune in the Côte-d'Or department in eastern France.
The gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples are known from a variety of sources, including ancient places of worship, statues, engravings, cult objects, and place or personal names. The ancient Celts appear to have had a pantheon of deities comparable to others in Indo-European religion, each linked to aspects of life and the natural world. Epona was an exception and retained without association with any Roman deity. By a process of syncretism, after the Roman conquest of Celtic areas, most of these became associated with their Roman equivalents, and their worship continued until Christianization. Pre-Roman Celtic art produced few images of deities, and these are hard to identify, lacking inscriptions, but in the post-conquest period many more images were made, some with inscriptions naming the deity. Most of the specific information we have therefore comes from Latin writers and the archaeology of the post-conquest period. More tentatively, links can be made between ancient Celtic deities and figures in early medieval Irish and Welsh literature, although all these works were produced well after Christianization.
The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. Located near the Place des Terreaux, it is housed in a former Benedictine convent which was active during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was restored between 1988, and 1998, remaining open to visitors throughout this time despite the ongoing restoration works. Its collections range from ancient Egyptian antiquities to the Modern art period, making the museum one of the most important in Europe. It also hosts important exhibitions of art, for example the exhibitions of works by Georges Braque and Henri Laurens in the second half of 2005, and another on the work of Théodore Géricault from April to July 2006. It is one of the largest art museums in France.
Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clésinger was a 19th-century French sculptor and painter.
The musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie in the French city of Besançon is the oldest public museum in France. It was set up in 1694, nearly a century before the Louvre became a public museum.
The Musée de Picardie is the main museum of Amiens and Picardy, in France. It is located at 48, rue de la République, Amiens. Its collections include artifacts ranging from prehistory to the 19th century, and form one of the largest regional museums in France.
Gallo-Roman culture was a consequence of the Romanization of Gauls under the rule of the Roman Empire. It was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman culture, language, morals and way of life in a uniquely Gaulish context. The well-studied meld of cultures in Gaul gives historians a model against which to compare and contrast parallel developments of Romanization in other less-studied Roman provinces.
Lugdunum, formerly known as the Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon-Fourvière or Museum of Roman Civilisation, is a museum of Gallo-Roman civilisation in Lyon. Previously presented at the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon and the Antiquarium, the municipal Gallo-Roman collection was transferred to a new building designed by Bernard Zehrfuss and opened in 1975, near the city's Roman theatre and odeon, on a hill known as Fourvière, located in the heart of the Roman city. Internally, it is formed of a concrete spiral ramp descending and branching out into the display rooms. It is managed and operated by the Metropolis of Lyon jointly with the archaeological museum of Saint-Romain-en-Gal. As well as displaying its own permanent collections of Roman, Celtic and pre-Roman material, a plan-relief of the ancient town and scale models of its major monuments such as the theatre and the Odeon, it also regularly hosts temporary exhibitions. On November 8, 2017, the museum was renamed Lugdunum.
Roger Agache was a French archaeologist. He was among the first to take part in aerial archaeology in France, and helped to develop a methodology for aerial prospecting.
The Euffigneix statue or God of Euffigneix is a Celtic stone pillar statue found near Euffigneix, a commune of Haute-Marne, France. The statue has been dated to the 1st century BC, within the Gallo-Roman period. The statue is a human bust with a large relief of a boar on its chest. The boar was a potent symbol for the Celts and the figure has been thought to represent a Gaulish boar-god, perhaps Moccus.
The God of Bouray is a Celtic bronze statuette dredged from the River Juine within Bouray-sur-Juine. The statuette is of a cross-legged human figure with an oversized head and hooved feet. It is thought to represent a Gallic god, perhaps the stag-god Cernunnos.
The God of Étang-sur-Arroux is a Gallo-Roman bronze statuette, probably found in the commune of Étang-sur-Arroux, not far from Autun, France.
The Lyon cup is a silver Gallo-Roman cup found in Lyon, France.
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