According to ancient historians, agents of the Persian king Cyrus captured and killed the son of Queen Tomyris of the ancient Scythians. In revenge, she led an army against Cyrus, defeated him, and ordered his beheading.
Here, the early sixteenth-century sculptor Severo da Ravenna shows the queen reacting to her victory, but not as one might expect. With her hand held up, open mouth, and eyes fixed on the decapitated head, she seems to apprehend the weight of what has transpired. The two wear identical crowns, suggesting their roles as equals. Is her raised hand making a gesture of shock—or is it a signal to cease? Perhaps the sculpture is a meditation on the futility of the cycle of revenge. What is certain is that her nudity is iconographically unnecessary. It may perhaps be explained by the eroticized context of Renaissance studioli, private study rooms created by humanists and scholars, the vast majority of whom were men.
Severo and his workshop were highly prolific and employed an inventive means of production. They cast sculptures in pieces, which were later assembled with screws. A small screw under Tomyris’s hand fastens the head of Cyrus to her palm.
Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus
Severo made several statuettes of saints and the crucified Christ but also many figures from ancient legend and history, including such women as Cleopatra and nude female subjects who have not been identified. Queen Tomyris shares with these bronzes of women a number of characteristics, and although none are signed, the group relates stylistically to other works that are.
Like the figure of the The Frick Collection's Neptune, Queen Tomyris reveals that Severo had an insecure grasp of anatomy. Her torso and especially her hips are awkwardly articulated, her stance is uneasily poised, and her hands are enormous. Compared with The Frick Collection's Mantuan Naked Female Figure possibly representing Diana, her body, gestures, and open-mouthed stare are singularly ambiguous. The widowed Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae, a Scythian nation, led her troops to battle against the Persian king Cyrus, who had invaded her land and captured her son. She conquered his army, killed Cyrus, and cut off his head. Severo's portrayal of the vengeful warrior-queen is so stylized in movement and expression it seems stage-like, resembling a balletic performance more than the climax of a bloodthirsty melodrama.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Chigi-Saraceni, Siena. Alphonse Kann, Paris. Sold through Durlacher Bros., February 22, 1910, to J. Pierpont Morgan, London and New York. Duveen. Frick, 1916.
Source: Sculpture in The Frick Collection: Italian. Volume III. New York: The Frick Collection, 1970.
