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The bronze candelabrum found in 1896 during the Austrian excavations in the ›Marble Hall‹ of the Harbour Gymnasium in Ephesus, which shows a group with two persons—Herakles fighting with a Centaur—in front of a tree, has been part of the collection of antiquities of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna since the end of the 19th century. In the course of recent research, questions concerning the history of the find and the object, technical aspects and modern restoration measures, as well as the dating and the original context of the installation were addressed. Scientific analyses were carried out, which helped to identify one of three other fragments present, a horse’s front hoof, as belonging to the group. A second human foot and a horse hind leg indicate that there was a second group of the same size. This one, however, was not quite identical as assumed in previous research, but probably showed a similar motif—maybe the hero kneeling on the centaur. Stylistic and technical aspects point to a dating in late Hellenistic times, in the middle of the 1st century BC, and eventually to a workshop in Alexandria. It is therefore possible that this is the oldest preserved bronze candelabrum of this form.

The article provides a semantic analysis of the theme of kitovras (centaur) in Russian medieval fine art. The author argues that in the system of relief decorations of Russian medieval cathedrals in Vladimir, the centaur is associated with the Jerusalemite kings David and Solomon and serves to accentuate the theme of a wise and righteous ruler. The study of kitovras images in Russian medieval art, traces the origins of this character back to apocryphal literature or even further to ancient mythology, Talmudic tradition and biblical narratives, which merged into a ‘Russian centaur’. The earliest kitovras images are found in Novgorod region in the 11th century. The typology of centaur images in Rus’, as well as the study of possible contexts for the use of these images in church decoration and in everyday life, make it possible to systematize the semantic and axiological connotations evoked by this figure of a man-beast. These connotations are associated with the ideas of (1) natural savagery, (2) demonic character, (3) duplicity, (4) wisdom, (5) architectural skills, (6) moral perfection, (7) saving pedagogy, (8) protection from evil and, finally, (9) religiously sanctioned authority. Since all these connotations are associated with the same character, the kitovras should be understood as a polyvalent symbol that reveals to viewers one or another of its aspects depending on a viewer’s semiotic code and on the visual and narrative contexts in which it is integrated. Russian churches open their facades into the surrounding urban environment and thereby saturate it with certain meanings, conveyed both by the outline of the churches and by their exterior decoration. Any figure, any scene and any character represented on external surfaces of the churches directly contributes to the semantics of the urban space, to its ideological and cultural program, and functions as a means of informing both confessional and local identity. Such is also the function of kitovras images in the semantic structure of traditional Russian cities. В статье проведён семантический анализ образа китовраса (кентавра) в русском средневековом изобразительном искусстве. Автор констатирует, что в системе рельефных украшений соборов Владимирской Руси кентавр связан с персонами иерусалимских царей Давида и Соломона и служит для усиления мотивов мудрости, зодчества и праведной власти. Исследование темы китовраса в русском средневековом искусстве позволяет обнаружить истоки этого персонажа в апокрифической литературе; ряд мотивов перенесён на русского кентавра из античной мифологии, талмудической традиции и библейских нарративов. Начальный этап распространения образа китовраса связан с культурой Новгорода XI века. Типология изображений кентавра на Руси, а также изучение возможных контекстов использования этого образа в храмовой декорации и повседневном обиходе дают возможность систематизировать те смысловые и ценностные коннотации, которые заключены в фигуре человека-зверя. Эти смысловые подтексты связаны с идеями (1) природной дикости, (2) демонического характера, (3) двуличия, (4) мудрости, (5) архитектурного мастерства, (6) нравственного совершенства, (7) спасительной педагогики, (8) защиты от зла и, наконец, (9) религиозно санкционированной власти. Поскольку все эти коннотации связаны с одним и тем же персонажем, постольку китоврас должен быть понят как поливалентный символ, обнаруживающий перед зрителем тот или иной конкретный содержательный аспект в зависимости от визуально-нарративного контекста, в который он включён, и от того кода, которым располагает (пользуется) реципиент. Русский храм открывается своими фасадами в окружающую городскую среду и тем самым активно участвует в наполнении этой среды определёнными смыслами, выраженными и с помощью формы храма, и с помощью его экстерьерного декора. Таким образом, любой сюжет, любая сцена и любой персонаж, которые помещены на внешних поверхностях храма, напрямую влияют на смысловое содержание городского пространства, его идеологическую и культурную аранжировку, выступают как средства формирования и универсальной, и локальной культурной идентичности. Такова роль образа китовраса в оформлении смысловой структуры традиционного русского города.

This article deals with the figure of the Centaur in Hölderlin’s later poetry. The constellation of this figure is based on the Ode Chiron introducing the Night Songs as well as on its earlier version, The Blind Singer. There are equally two fragments by Pindar that Hölderlin translated and commented on: Untreue der Weisheit and Das Belebende. An early fragment by Walter Benjamin brings us closer to Hölderlin’s figure. Chiron, who distinguished himself among the Centaurs, forms an anthropological center around which Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history revolves.

Tracking the ancient centaur as myth and metaphor through cultural history to the twenty-first century reveals how humans have begun to reconceive animal-human relations. Its origins are open to question, but at least date from pre-classical and early Greek history, when nomadic tribes with superior horsemanship skills appeared. Associated with the astronomical constellation Centaurus, the centaur metaphor was initially gendered. The hybrid embodied human and equine qualities, both negative and positive (for example, the bestial classical centaur and the supra-human Spanish conquistador). After examining the history of the centaur metaphor as well as relationships between horses and humans in the pre-twentieth century Western literary tradition, this research focuses on five texts: Monty Roberts’ "The Man Who Listens to Horses (2009); Tom McGuane’s Some Horses" (2013); John Steinbeck’s "The Red Pony" (1945); Jane Smiley’s "Horse Heaven" (2000); and Gillian Mears’ "Foal’s Bread" (2011). It argues that contemporary nonfiction and fiction demonstrate a change in the way in which the metaphor has been used, reflecting a will to reshape relationships between species, grounded in empathy as well as respect for alternative communication strategies. The centaur metaphor as non-gendered hybrid appears when riders feel one with their horses through harmonious partnerships inherent in teamwork. They feel as if they have become the centaur, literalizing the metaphor within themselves.

This article deals with the crucial role of mythology, ideology, reign, hegemony, ethnicity, language, visual signs as well as other events and components upon ancient, narrative and visual archetypes of Iran and its boundaries. The series of cultural and political exchanges occurring due to the rise of governments and the companionship of intellectuals and artists, changed the foundation of visual signs and veiled the religious teachings within them. As a result, such structure brought about a shift of concept and also a delicate variation in the appearance of the equid of the Messenger of Islam (Buragh) in the tale of 'Miraj' (Ascension). With its animal body and beautiful human visage, the counterpart myth of the Grecian 'Centaur' has summed up in its character the power of the rulers of the Islamic regions, symbolic relations of numerology, the male unconscious and female gender and others with a sacred tale attributed to Muslims (the prophet's ascension). Therefore, the combination is the product of cross-cultural conformation and political worldview within the discrete Iranian Kingdom which, so as to promote religious ideal, overtly and covertly combines the story of 'Miraj' with the role of 'Buragh' and infuses it into the Islamic culture. The above statements are the results of a comparative study made through desk study of library resources and slice model in order to reach another aspect of the speculative and pictorial essence of art in Iran. The study endeavors to find responses to two questions:1: how BURAGH and CENTAUR are physically and spiritually related? 2: What are the genders, concepts and effective factors affecting femininity or masculinity of the prophet's horse.

The southern façade of the Holy Sepulchre was adorned until 1929 with two carved lintels, distinct in their iconographies (exhibited ever since in the Rockefeller Museum). Whereas the western Christological lintel represents the narrative of the last days of Jesus in Jerusalem (albeit in breach with the narrative sequence), the eastern peopled-scroll lintel is a non-narrative representation of a variety of beasts, birds, and naked male figures, some of whom are obscenely pointing to their genitalia. The puzzling iconography of this bestial world includes the conspicuous images of a bird-siren and a centaur. Rather overlooked by past scholarship, it would seem implausible that the most important holy site in Christendom and a meta-pilgrimage church would have been decorated with meaningless imagery. This paper contextualizes the eastern lintel within crusader concepts of history and mythology, biblical symbolism, liturgy and patronage. The eastern door gave way to the funerary chapel of the crusader kings, located beneath the Calvary Chapel. An examination of the funerary context reveals that sirens played part in such schemes, endowing the lintel with an apotropaic vitality. A remarkable chapter in the chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres, illustrating the curiosities of the Lands of the Saracens, is suggested as a major conceptual notion for the understanding of the non-narrative lintel, which actually stands within the Bestiary tradition. The lintel thus becomes a liminal site, where all polyvalent layers meet, meant to show the opposition of good and evil forces. This opposition is established by installing a historiated Christological lintel to the west, embodying a liturgical vision of the New Jerusalem recently established by the Franks and, to the east, an image of the conquered beasts of the Saracens, doomed to hell, signaling Latin victory, on the one hand, and promising an apotropaic protection for the departed, on the other. The patronage of Queen Melisende, in collaboration with the crusader Church, is then analyzed.

The brief triangular love between Nietzche, Salomé, and Rée – as crystallised in the famous photograph of kitsch (literal) horse-play, where the woman is depicted as treating the two men as beasts of burden – allows us to consider the role of ‘creaturely love’ in our more general understanding of the lover’s discourse. That is to say, through such images we can explore the role and figure of the animal within ‘the anthropological machine’, itself designed to produce a sense of the human from the inhuman (especially through mediated forms of intimacy). Further, in the different intermedial relationships between photography, poetry, and philosophy, the Centaur – in the letters and texts circulated by this group (later including Rilke) – provides a charged specific totem for a libidinal ecology of souls, striving to understand themselves as simultaneously creaturely and spiritual. Such a figure allowed both a recognition and a disavowal of the nonhuman basis (and telos) of human affections.

While analyzing the traces left on the ground by the thief of his cows, Apollo mentions allusively a Centaur as the author of the theft, although he formulates this hypothesis only to reject it immediately. Despite the incongruity of this false syllogism and beyond its comic effects, the allusion reveals “theological” significations corresponding to the theogonic issues of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.

Migrating from Greek mythology to scripture and ecclesiastical writing, sirens are best known for the perils they put on the road of Odysseus, and conversely, on that of the crucified Christ and on that of the pilgrim, two significations that Odysseus, the eternal voyageur tied to the mast, came to symbolize in the Middle Ages. Long acknowledged in past scholarship, the siren motif was perceived of as a multi-layered image, whose negative Homeric connotations suited an even vaster range of destructive meanings, moral, social and political. More than sheer misogyny, the hybrid sirens represent violation of social order, mainly that of the manly world. It is therefore no coincidence to find them dwelling in the biblical debauched town of Babylon, and in the land of Edom, destined to be destroyed, alongside hybrid centaurs, both in the Septuagint and in the Vulgate. These beasts gained much popularity throughout the Middle Ages, and embody the ultimate significance of evil in the medieval bestiary, as well as in a wide-ranging exegetical literature. This development may stand for the immense dispersion of the siren motif in Romanesque sculpture. Meant at an edifying purpose, sirens associated with urban destruction, lust, and avarice, signify the menace of sin they seduce humanity to fall into. The virtuous Christian, recognizing the long-enduring classical motif in its new Christian context should take the paradigm of Odysseus in his Christological typology, and restrain from evil. Though constituting a rather popular motif of Romanesque sculpture in general, sirens seem to inhabit many of the churches of the Auvergne and the Velay regions of France, along pilgrimage shrines, located lengthwise the Via Podiensis and crosswise routes, thus forming a marked feature of the local imagery. More than sheer enthusiasm for the antique, as past scholarship would have it, sirens seem to have chanted a very specific local chant in Auvergne-Velay. Constituting a major motif, which testifies to a profound understanding of their contextual implications, they represent a multifaceted image, denoting didactic, apotropaic, liturgical, social, and political messages. The context of pilgrimage and pilgrimage roads seems to have constituted a perfect setting for this multitude of sirens. The Via Podiensis was known as particularly uninviting. The mountainous topography, infested with thieves and brigands, provided lucrative opportunities of ambushing pilgrims on their way. It is the purpose of this paper to uncover the versatile imports of the siren antique motif in Romanesque Auvergne-Velay, by pointing out their meticulous perplexing delineation in the context of actual hardships pilgrims and congregants endured within pilgrimage shrines and roads. The first part of this paper will survey the range of allegorical significances of sirens from Homer to Jerome and to medieval exegeses, followed by a description of sirens in Auvergne-Velay. Then, I would like to suggest a new reading of the particular rendering of sirens in the small church of Pont-du-Château and in the pilgrimage church of Notre-Dame of Orcival, which may bear a local historical significance, resulting from the conflicting situations of pilgrims, on their way to worship the celestial realm.

In the IInd century of our era Galen of Pergamus built up a rational medical work which ruled out the magic practices or explanations drawn from mythological narratives looked upon as so many false beliefs. He indulged in particular in a critical analysis of the fabulous figure of the Centaur whose existence seemed to him incompatible with his knowledge of living bodies. And yet that keenly rational thought gave birth in its turn to a myth. Galen relied on his medical knowledge to construct the figure of the demiurge.