Roman Bronze Mouse Figure Nibbling Food

Roman, Imperial period. A leaded bronze mouse, no bigger than a thumb joint, sits back on its haunches and lifts a rounded morsel of food to its mouth with both forepaws. The modeler caught the creature's essential attitude in a handful of cubic centimeters: the long tapering snout of a shrew-mouse, the outsized cupped ears, the compact hunched body and the tail curled tight along the flank. Surfaces carry a green cuprous patina broken by darker earthen deposits. Small bronzes of this kind are routinely called votives, yet remarkably little is known about Roman bronze mice specifically; this one may equally have served as freestanding household ornament or as a finial figure attached atop a larger object such as a lamp, casket, or vessel handle. Mounted on a custom museum-quality display stand. Mice and shrews carried an ambivalent charge in the Roman world. Pliny the Elder records the shrew as a creature of ill omen whose bite was thought venomous, while Apollo himself was worshipped in Asia Minor as Smintheus, "Lord of Mice," a god who both sent and stayed plagues of rodents in the grain. Mice appear across Roman minor arts, on gems, in mosaic emblemata gathering crumbs from the unswept floor, and as small cast bronzes, almost always shown feeding: the attribute that made them both a nuisance in the granary and a witty subject for a table ornament. Leaded bronze, a copper alloy with lead added to improve flow into fine molds, was the standard choice for small cast figures of this scale. The lead lowers the melting point and lets molten metal fill the delicate extremities, the ears and the curling tail, in a single pour. A similar example sold at Christie's, London for $4,606 (Sale 7521 - Lot 220 - Antiquities - 25 October 2007). Please note that this figure contains up to 28% lead. Item # 204751

Estimate:£301.42

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