Relief with Two Maenads

Two maenads recline on a rocky base, bracketed at the ends by two curling acanthus plants. The figure on the left, with torso seen frontally and legs crossed in three-quarter view, embraces her companion; she lifts a large tympanon, which touches the plant. She wears a chiton belted beneath her breasts, and a himation softly draped over her legs. The maenad on the right, slightly foreshortened, holds a thyrsus in her lap and is dressed similarly. Both wear their hair loosely pulled back. The relief was mold-made with hand-finished details, including gilding applied to the figures and pink pigment applied to the back of the relief. In the middle of the lower edge is a hole for attachment to a wooden sarcophagus or head of a kline (bed), which were used in lavish Tarentine funerary rites in the second half of the fourth century B.C.