Sasanian plate

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0:00:06.6 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re in the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., looking at one of their treasures. This magnificent, shallow bowl made of silver with gilding, that is, with gold. And it shows this complex scene. It’s really just beautifully wrought.

0:00:23.0 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: So what we’re seeing is Shapur II. It’s a hunting scene. This king is in active motion. He is on a horse, he is shooting his arrows. He already killed one boar and is attempting to kill the second one.

0:00:39.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: So there is no inscription, which means that we really have to use the iconography to help to identify what is being portrayed. And the specificity of this particular crown helps to identify this man as Shapur II. Now, he was one of the great rulers of the Sasanian Empire in present day Iran. He was able to push the borders of the kingdom beyond what are now those national borders, going from the Indus Valley and the Caucasus, and then in the west all the way to the Roman Empire.

0:01:10.2 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: So Shapur II is considered one of the longest rulers of the Sasanian dynasty. While Zoroastrianism is the official religion of the dynasty.

0:01:21.6 Dr. Steven Zucker: Zoroastrianism remains a living religion.

0:01:24.2 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions still being practiced. Zoroastrianism is defined as the balance between evil and good, chaos and order. And this is what really is about this plate with Shapur II. He’s controlling chaos represented by the boars, and he’s bringing into order and controlling what is out of the empire, or [what] he wants to be part of the empire.

0:01:51.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: That idea of the king ordering the universe, creating the good that comes from order, is so beautifully represented in the easy way he’s shown riding this horse. The horse’s legs are spread, the front legs are forward, the back legs are pushed all the way back. So you get the sense that the horse is leaping and yet he seems so steady and is able to aim his bow perfectly in order to bring down these wild animals. And those boars then must be a representation of the chaos, of the disorder of the universe, that he is bringing into this kind of supreme alignment.

0:02:29.4 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: Everything about his posture, the decoration, the garments, the jewelry that he wears, also the bands and the streamers, are all indication of his being not only the king, but also given this power, thanks to Zoroastrianism, and that he is the one that can control these two wild animals.

0:02:50.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: And he’s doing it with such elegance. Look at the beautiful way in which his courtly costume is being represented. You can only imagine that these are silks that he’s wearing, that are fluttering in the wind. Or for instance, those little palmette-like forms that dangle from the horse, almost like earrings.

0:03:06.8 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: The king is almost coming out from the plate. And I think I would be remiss to not say that this plate is unique, because there’s 19 pieces that were used to create this plate. Each of these pieces were inserted into the silver plate.

0:03:23.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: Looking closely, the types of craftsmanship that have been employed in order to represent this scene is overwhelming. You can see areas where the flat-back plane of the silver has just been etched into, so a kind of chasing. And then there are areas that seem fully sculptural. I’m looking specifically at the right foreleg of the horse and, of course, the king’s head. And what’s interesting is that if you look at the silver that is now exposed, which would have originally been covered by the gilded piece, you can see that the silver is sort of more roughly handled. This was never meant to be seen. And it gives you a sense of just how carefully the rest of the plate has been treated in order to remove all references to hammering and the manipulation of the surface.

0:04:10.3 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: It’s really a masterpiece of craftsmanship in the Sasanian period. The body of the king, with exception of the face and the hands, are gilded. The boars as well, the background is silver. So the gilding is really given to the figure of the king and the boars in the action. So the gilding is a mix of gold and mercury. When heated, what it remains is really gold.

0:04:34.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: So the mercury burns off.

0:04:36.2 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: Burns off, yes, exactly. You need really to be skilled, to not let the gilding escape the border that you have created. We can see that the gilding is where it should be, but there’s still some areas where the gilding has gone over, where it should have been.

0:04:51.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: The idea of the king as hunter goes back long before the Sasanians, perhaps most famously the Neo-Assyrians, who are famous for representing their rulers in the act of hunting.

0:05:04.4 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: Hunting is one of the oldest motifs in the ancient Near East. I think one of the most important things of Sasanian art is the repetitiveness of the iconography. No matter how many plates you’re going to encounter in another museum, the hunting scene will be there.

0:05:21.2 Dr. Steven Zucker: But this wasn’t sport, this wasn’t hunting for food. This was a symbolic means of representing the authority of the king and the king’s ability to impose order into the chaos of nature.

0:05:33.9 Dr. Antonietta Catanzariti: We can call it an activity that royals have performed for centuries and millennia. But again, here I’d like to go back to the concept of Zoroastrianism or really controlling and bringing balance to this big empire under Shapur II, this really amazing king of this time period.

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This work at the National Museum of Asian Art

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

The Sasanian Empire from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Ann C. Gunter and Paul Jett, Ancient Iranian metalwork in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1992), pp. 106–113

More Smarthistory images...

Sasanian art, an introduction

Zoroastrianism, an introduction