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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 522434, member: 5833&quot;]I&#039;m not sure whether there&#039;s a coherent image here or an outburst of art nouveau exuberance.&nbsp; Everyone is right about snakes &amp; Medusa, of course, &amp; it&#039;s not at all unusual for Medusa to be depicted as very beautiful.&nbsp; It would be unusual for Eve to be framed by 2 shakes.&nbsp; There&#039;s more going on, though.&nbsp; This looks meant to be quite a young woman.&nbsp; And Fid just added:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t recognize the plant but does not look like laurel to me.&nbsp; The <i>gestalt</i> I get with a young woman, a couple of serpents &amp; what might be sheaves/bundles of something edible, is Persephone/Proserpina.&nbsp; Her mother Ceres/Demeter keeps a couple of serpents around, mainly as draught animals, and takes her chariot &amp; a couple of torches to go looking for her abducted daughter.</p><p><br /></p><p>Following Fid&#039;s good thought, the daughter of Asklepios, Hygieia, is a definite possibility, since herbs and a snake are among her attributes.&nbsp; The physician&#039;s staff with a single snake got conflated long ago with the beribboned caduceus of Hermes, the ribbons becoming 2 snakes.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]167151[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]167152[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>The second figure is an allegorical one of Medicine; the serpent is coiled on her right arm &amp; she is feeding it from a bowl.</p><p><br /></p><p>Could be this was a decoration for the drug cabinet of a very upscale medical practice or apothecary.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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