Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Something's Missing
Feodor Bronnikov (1827-1902), Consecration of a Herm (Освящение гермы), in Moscow, Tretjakov Gallery (inv. no. 1801; click once or twice to enlarge):
Something's missing — see
Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (1979; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982 = Sather Classical Lectures, 47), p. 39 (note omitted):
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More than two thousand years have done their best to mutilate extant herms and to obliterate what would still today be scandalous in public; but anybody familiar with vase-paintings knows what a classical herm looks like: a rather dignified, usually bearded, head on a four-cornered pillar and, in due place, an unmistakable, realistically molded, erect phallus.
