Lamp Handle with Dolphins

Unknown

4th–5th century · Copper alloy · Medieval Art

A pair of dolphins use their tails to support the handle’s rectangular plaque. Their heads would have been attached to a now-lost base. Round flat hanging lamps, or polycandela, were lit by oil-filled glass vessels hung from the round holes in their designs. Paul the Silentiary in 563 described the effect of huge hanging lamps that lit the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople: “Thus is everything clothed in beauty…no words are sufficient to describe the illumination in the evening: you might say that some nocturnal sun filled the majestic church with light.”

Artist

Unknown

Date

4th–5th century

Medium

Copper alloy

Culture

Byzantine

Department

Medieval Art

Credit line

Gift of Lawrence J. Majewski, 1963