Pompeii No.18: The Right Trophy

Last week, I unveiled the finished left trophy, but I've actually been working on both trophies simultaneously.

Like the left trophy, the right trophy features a helmet that is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Metropolitan Museum of Art  

The helmet is called a burgonet, a term that is derived from the word Burgundy. This one is embossed steel and dates to between 1545 and 1550, and it was probably made in Milan, Italy. The Metropolitan rues the fact that early conservators polished a subtly engraved background pattern completely away!

I've mentioned that I like to use as much reference as possible, and when I was designing the trophies, I had a clear vision of heavily grained poles upon which to mount the paraphernalia. Where would such wood exist? I ended up photographing weathered telephone poles that face the Gulf of Mexico, near my neighborhood.

Moving down and behind the shield are a number of implements that are historically correct. (I have taken a little license with the baton in the form of a battering ram, if only because I wanted the pleasure of painting the ram's head!) The hand is the top of a Roman standard.

Unlike the shield of the left trophy, the design of this shield was never seen in Rome. Instead, I have borrowed the design of a cameo from the collection of Catherine the Great, below.

photo-illustration, Mark D. Ruffner  |  ancientrome.ru

Looking at the collections of Catherine the Great, one quickly realizes what a discerning eye she had. She loved cameos, and especially jeweled ones, but it was her habit — one can clearly see by looking at her collection — to replace any jeweled frames with very simple ones. She evidently didn't want anything to detract from the artistry of the cameo itself.

The base of the right trophy complements, but is not identical to the left trophy.

Below is the finished Right Trophy Wall.

click to enlarge

That panel on the right is looking quite bare now, don't you think? In the next week we'll figure out what to put there. I hope you'll join me then!
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