The description of Achilles’ shield in The Iliad is as enchanting as it is impossible. It is a microcosm of the universe, it is life itself captured in solid metal; it cannot exist. Is it any wonder that so many artists have tried their hand at recreating it?
In 2024, I decided to add my name to that list. Here is the result, along with a look at the research that went into it.
Fig. 1: Shield of Achilles, Charlie Lovett-Dietrich. Pen and acrylic on shaped plywood, 30” diameter, 2024.
Fig 2: Shield of Achilles, John Flaxman, comm. Philip Rundell. Silver gilt on bronze, 35.6” diameter, 1821.
Similar attempts, such as that of Flaxman and Rundell’s 1821 cast (Fig. 2), were done in a Classical or Neoclassical style, or something even more contemporary. I wanted to create a design that was more closely based on actual art styles from the Late Bronze Age and Greek Dark Ages. I did not strive for complete historical or textual accuracy, because I do not believe that would be possible. Instead, I used the idea that Homer’s Iliad as we know it was most likely a conglomerate of smaller myths from different time periods. This same synthesis could have been applied to imagery from various existing artworks, which got rolled up into one larger description of a legendary shield. Therefore, the separate elements could each reflect a different art style found in known artifacts from the Mycenaean Bronze Age. If the setting of story is the siege of Troy, some real-life version of that may have taken place between 1750-1050 BCE (based on scant archaeological evidence of fortifications and destruction on the ruins of Troy VI and VII). If the actual description of the shield, the ekphrasis, was added by Homer, then the imagery that inspired it would have had to be present earlier than around 650 BCE, when it is estimated that Homer wrote The Iliad down. Of course, the description could have been courtesy of an earlier bard, or elements were added over time between each telling. With these limits bounding the rough timeline, I was left with a broad range of art styles to pull from. I decided to model nearly every register (5 in total) on a different style or artifact, including the frescoes at Thera (Fig. 3 and 4), the Vapheio Cups (Fig. 5), the Lion Hunt dagger (Fig. 6), and lastly, a krater from the Geometric period (Fig. 7). Elements from different artifacts were used to fill the gaps of knowledge where necessary, even in other registers. For instance, the only depiction of women’s clothing I could find was in Minoan frescoes (Fig. 3), and so the women are dressed in that manner throughout the shield, even where they are depicted in the style of the Vapheio Cup figures (Fig. 5) or the hunters on the Lion Hunt Dagger (Fig. 6).
In this paper, I will go into the methods and decisions behind aspects of the design, moving through register by register. Although building the shield form was certainly a lengthy and involved process, it is not especially relevant to the desired effect, since I was trying to emulate cast metal rather than carved plywood. The materiality of the shield is an important part of it in The Iliad. Homer describes the casting methods and alludes to certain metalworking techniques throughout his description, and while I could not stay true to the process of the shield’s creation, I could at least use the materials I had on hand to simulate the final effect.
The Heavens
The first design specified by Homer’s description is that of the sun, a full moon, and four constellations (“the Pleiades, the Hyades, Orion the mighty warrior, and the Great Bear, known as the Wagon, which revolves in place, the only constellation never washed by Ocean’s streams.” Il. 18.487-489). This and the outermost layer, the ocean that wraps around the edge of the shield, are the only two designs with no narrative elements. If the shield is a microcosm of civilization, then every other aspect of life is supposed to fit between these two boundaries. Common practice has imagery radiating out from the center, with the figures on the inner (lower) groundline. However, this would have the figures standing on top of the sky and facing out towards the ocean, so I switched the directionality around.
Since I could find no depictions of the celestial bodies from Late Bronze Age Mycenaean art, I decided to use a rather straightforward representation of the sun, moon, and constellations on a black (niello) background, to mimic the night sky. Although mostly an aesthetic decision, I did also consider that the more opaque black paint would do a better job of covering the hardware used to attach the handle.
Fig. 8: Phoenician silver bowl from Amathus, 750-600 BCE. Image courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
Fig. 3: “The Saffron Gatherers” fresco at Akrotiri, 1650-1625 BCE. Image courtesy of the Archives of the Excavations at Akrotiri, Thera. Fig. 4: “The Flotilla” fresco at Akrotiri, 1650-1625 BCE. Image courtesy of the Archives of the Excavations at Akrotiri, Thera.
The Two Cities
This register contains perhaps the most narratively complex imagery, and as the second ring out from the center, it has minimal space to work with. Knowing this, and because of the similar imagery of a besieged castle, I decided that I would use a simple linework-only style like that of the engravings on the silver dish from Amathus (Fig. 8). However, the castle at war is only a part of the larger picture, and for the elements of the ambush and the city at peace, I drew on the Akrotiri frescoes at Thera (Fig. 3 and 4).
The first difficulty I encountered in planning this register was with the bridal procession in the city at peace. The only representations of women that I could find were Minoan, from the Akrotiri frescoes, or from the controversial restorations of the frescoes at Knossos. I did not feel confident in using the Knossos restorations, which further limited my reference selection to Akrotiri, and mainly the “saffron gatherers” fresco (Fig. 3). The social status of the two women in this work is unclear—was this everyday attire, or were these women particularly wealthy and therefore well-dressed? Typically, women in art are shown to be especially beautiful or attractive rather than mundane, particularly if the art style is not focused on realism. These two women also seem to conform to such a beauty standard, with unnaturally white skin and perhaps more jewelry than one would typically wear to harvest spices under the hot sun. The dress style, at least, was consistent across several frescoes at both sites, with an open front and long multilayered skirts. I used this style for most of my depictions of women on the shield, with an additional veil for the bride as specified in the Iliad. The other exception is the figure of Doom, in the ambush section of the city at war, who wears only her blood-red cloak (which is black, since it’s just linework.)
The other major problem I encountered was with the chronology of the court case. How was I supposed to show the cause, proceedings, and results of an entire ancient lawsuit in a tiny amount of space? This was a recurring issue for me since most of the registers include at least one narrative where time is shown to pass. In his commentary, Edwards points out that the central figures of each narrative seem to be mentioned three times, suggesting that they appear on the shield in three consecutive “scenes” (Edwards, 1991, pp. 212), a conclusion which is echoed by Byre in his 1992 article. Due to space constraints, I was forced to reduce this down to two scenes, with the two men in disagreement in the crowded marketplace over the body of the victim (Il. 18.496-500). The court scene is distilled down to just the elders in their stone chairs, with the “helpful crowd yelling suggestions” off to either side in the doorways (Il. 18.500-506). The outline of the courthouse itself is purely to provide a visual separation, similar to the lines between panels in a comic. The arched doorways in particular are an invention—as far as I know, architecture was still limited to post-and-lintel construction during this period of the Late Bronze Age.
The city at war provides a more straightforward narrative, at least in terms of imagery. The besieged castle I was able to directly reference from the Amathus silver dish (Fig. 8) with the only changes being the details of who was depicted defending the castle. The wording of Wilson’s translation made it unclear whether Ares and Athena were accompanying the ambush party or the castle defenders, so I made the decision to have them among the defenders. The Lattimore translation paints a clearer picture, and has the gods with the raiders, but unfortunately I gained access to this version only after I had already painted the design. A lack of space again dictated that certain elements of the ambush be left out, and so the ambushing force is reduced to just two scouts hiding behind a hill, and the forces of Mayhem, Aggression and Doom were narrowed down to just Doom in her bloody cloak, since she is the most eloquently described (Il. 18.517-541).
Fig. 5: The “violent” Vapheio gold cup depicting a bull attacking a man. Credit: Zde/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0
The Farmer’s Year
I had decided early on that this would be the register where I mimicked the look of the vapheio cups (Fig. 5), based mostly on the prominence of floral and faunal forms in both the poem and the cups. Oxen and cattle appear in three out of five registers, but the farmer’s year register is the only one where plant life is present as significantly as it is in the heavily forested reliefs of the cups. This was the most technically difficult layer, given that I could not actually create a three-dimensional relief like the repoussé technique on the cups. It is also the thinnest register, which is a decision that I immediately regretted because it meant that all the figures had to be extremely tiny in order to fit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I put off working on this section until last, meaning that I finished the vineyard just thirty minutes before I was due to present the shield in class. It is for this reason that the grape vines are far more impressionistic than any other element. I find that I do not mind this inaccuracy, since it is much closer to my actual painting style, and it feels like a personal touch or a signature.
Despite primarily using a faux-repoussé look, which would be just shaped gold, I did also include some of the colors or effects specified, since they would have been technically possible to achieve via inlay (“Metalwork.” Encyclopedia of Art; “Uncovering Ancient Egyptian Jewelry Techniques: Inlay, Repoussé, and Cloisonné.”) The description of the earth which turns black as it is plowed while still being made of gold (Il. 18.548-549), could be a reference to the use of a niello technique to blacken details of the reliefwork, while the “plentiful white barley” (Il. 18.559-560) could be an inlay of quartz or another white stone. There is also a lot of colors specified in the detailing of the vineyard: “And on the shield he set a spacious vineyard, heavy with clustering grapes. The fruit was black, the vines, fine gold, staked all the way across with silver posts. Around the vineyard ran a ditch of blue enamel, and round that he formed a fence of tin” (Il. 18.561-565). I went back and forth on whether or not to include these inlays until right up to the point I painted the vineyard. On the one hand, this is one section where there is a explicit color information. On the other hand, it is one of the only sections with so many color and material variations. In the interest of not making the shield appear lopsided (and also because I was running out of time), I resolved to stick with the simple gold leaves and vines and black grapes.
Fig. 6: “Lion Hunt Dagger”, bronze with silver, gold and niello inlay, 1600-1500 BCE. Image courtesy of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Fig. 9: “Toreador Fresco”, 1550 BCE. Image courtesy of the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete.
The Bulls, The Shepherds, and The Dance
Lions appear frequently in Mycenaean art from this era (see Franković and Matić, 2020), but the most famous example is probably the “Lion Hunt Dagger” (Fig. 6), so that was the style I used for this register. The dark niello background also differentiates this layer and adds visual interest, which is why I used it for the “heavens” layer, too. Technically speaking, I used “niello” throughout every register; anywhere there’s black paint, that would have been achieved by rubbing and heating niello into the engraved surface of the base metal. The way that the technique is used on the lion hunt dagger, however, is as an adhesive for gold and silver foils for gilding.
I used scale to create a sense of emphasis and narrative in the “bulls” portion of this register, although this use of perspective is more modern and is not in line with the use of scale in Bronze Age works. The artifacts and artworks that I used as my primary references mainly stick with having uniformly sized figures within each scene. In the poem, the only instance of a hierarchy of scale being employed is in the description of Ares and Athena in the city at war, where they are larger than the raiders they accompany. There is also an implied hierarchy of scale in the description of Doom, who holds a man aloft in each hand (Il. 18.535-537). Although not specified, I also made the “master surveying his precinct” in the Farmer’s Year section larger than all the workers to communicate his role.
There is not much detail in the poem about the valley of the shepherds, so it occupies a relatively small portion of the register. I also could not find any direct references for the depiction of sheep, so I used the conventions I had seen for showing other ungulates in the Akrotiri frescoes (Fig. 4), and simply made the sheep a little bit fatter and fluffier than the deer that are seen in the background landscapes of the flotilla fresco.
The Dance that Homer writes about has a progression of time, where the people dance first in a circle, and then in lines facing each other (Il. 18.599-601). There is an emphasis on the movement and action of the dancers in the language of the translated poem, but there is a limit to the amount of motion that can be portrayed in Minoan and Mycenaean art styles of the period. Even in the Toreador fresco at Knossos (Fig. 9), the incredibly dynamic pose of the acrobat or bull-leaper is made stilted by the nondescript musculature of the figure; the twist of the spine is implied, but not directly illustrated. Some attempt at showing the flow of motion has been made with the way their hair is flying everywhere, but there is no directionality to it, and that same flow is lacking in the garments the leaper is wearing. Additionally, the extent of the reconstruction efforts on these frescoes made me hesitant to use them as a primary reference, although the posing of one of the tumblers in The Dance does allude to the pose of the bull-leaper while not being a direct parallel.
The women are again dressed in Minoan style and carrying flower garlands, while the men are wearing the “delicate tunics” specified in the text (Il. 18.596-597). I interpreted the gold knives on the men’s belts as a sort of visual innuendo, although I suppose it’s possible that they could have just been a fashionable accessory to wear to a dance.
Fig. 7: Early proto-corinthian pottery crater, 725-700 BCE. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, (CC BY-SA 4.0).
The Ocean
The outermost register contains the band of ocean that encircles the shield, rendered in the style of the design on the “early proto-corinthian crater” now housed in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 7). This, and the patterning on the three other decorative groundlines, is a reference to the idea that The Iliad as we know it was shaped by the time period in which it was written down, closer to 650 BCE and the Geometric period than the Dark Ages in which the story is set.
Works Cited
Byre, Calvin S. “Narration, Description, and Theme in the Shield of Achilles.” The Classical Journal, vol. 88, no. 1, 1992, pp. 33–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297742.
Edwards, Mark W. The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 5, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 204-223. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/iliadcommentary0005unse/page/206/mode/2up.
“Metalwork.” Encyclopedia of Art, visual-arts-cork.com. http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/metalwork.htm.
Franković, Filip, and Uroš Matić. “THE LION, THE WEAPON AND THE WARLORD: HISTORICAL EVALUATION OF THE EARLY LATE BRONZE AGE AEGEAN ICONOGRAPHY.” Ägypten Und Levante / Egypt and the Levant, vol. 30, 2020, pp. 345–75. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27045091.
Hemingway, Seán. “Art of the Aegean Bronze Age.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 69, no. 4, 2012, pp. 4–48. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23223028.
Early proto-corinthian pottery crater, 725-700 BCE. Taggert, Emma. “Uncover the History of Ancient Greek Pottery and How It Evolved Over Centuries.” My Modern Met, 17 July 2021, https://mymodernmet.com/ancient-greek-pottery/.
“Uncovering Ancient Egyptian Jewelry Techniques: Inlay, Repoussé, and Cloisonné.” WeChronicle. https://wechronicle.com/jewelry/uncovering-ancient-egyptian-jewelry-techniques-inlay-repousse-and-cloisonne/.
Witcombe, Christopher L.C.E. “Thera (Santorini): Painting,” arthistoryresources.net, 2016, http://arthistoryresources.net/greek-art-archaeology-2016/thera-painting.html.
Wichmann, Anna. “Vapheio Gold Cups Are Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Art”,Greek Reporter, 01/03/2024, https://greekreporter.com/2024/01/23/vapheio-gold-cups-ancient-greek/.