Haltung ist Botschaft. Zu dem Gestus gegenbewegter Arme in der mittelmeerischen und keltischen Plastik der Eisenzeit

Abstract

This essay charts the depiction of a motif in sculptural representations across the centuries and investigates its possible message. It concerns a pose in which the arms are held in a countermovement: While one arm is lifted in an upward motion and bent so that the hand is nearly always lying flat and open on the chest, the other is positioned downwards in a countermovement, with the hand in the same posture. In a seemingly almost ingenious manner, this pose combines a simple composition with a gesture that appears artfully affected. The term ›counter-moving arms‹, created specifically to describe it, is introduced here. Apparently originating and developing in the environment of Northern Syrian sculpture, it appears in Anatolia, then in Etruscan sculpture in the late 7th century BC; later, in the 6th/5th century BC in large-scale Celtic sculpture; then in the Iberian (4th–1st century BC) and finally in the Roman sculpture of Northwest Hispania. The number of monuments with this gesture in the respective regions is very small; regionally, it is only ever depicted over very short periods of time; only in the regions of Hispania (Iberia in particular) can longer durations be observed. This phenomenon is elucidated through denotation and connotation – parameters developed in semiotics. At its core, the pose’s message could have referred to universal values such as a long pedigree, blue blood and ancient royalty.