Spear

A spear is a polearm consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as with fire-hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as bone, flint, obsidian, copper, bronze, iron, or steel. As one of the earliest and most widespread tools developed by early humans, the spear has been used for at least 400,000 years for hunting, fishing, and warfare, and it remains a persistent motif across the history of art. Its appearance in 81 works within this collection alone testifies to its enduring role as a visual subject, one that carries meanings ranging from the martial and the sacred to the tragic and the heroic.

The spear carries layered symbolic weight across cultures and periods. In Greek antiquity, the spear, or dory, served as a status and sovereignty symbol from at least late Mycenaean times, and the spear of Achilles was believed to heal wounds as well as inflict them. In Norse mythology, the spear Gungnir was the attribute of Odin, while in Celtic tradition the spear of Lug was a weapon of fire that guaranteed victory. Christian iconography adopted the spear as both positive and negative attribute: the Holy Lance became the attribute of the Christian centurion Longinus, while a broken spear signified the synagogue accused of deicide. Saint George is inseparable from his spear with which he slays the dragon, and Saint Thomas was martyred by the same weapon. The spear thus oscillates between instrument of salvation and instrument of death, of legitimate authority and of violent transgression.

The treatment of the spear in art reflects broader shifts in military technology, cultural values, and representational priorities. In prehistoric contexts, spears were depicted as essential hunting and combat tools, with archaeological evidence from the Schöningen spears onward establishing their fundamental role in human survival. Greek art emphasized the spear as the defining weapon of the hoplite and the instrument of heroic individualism in Homeric narrative. Roman art distinguished between the thrusting hasta and the throwing pilum, with the latter's long, bending tip designed to foul enemy shields. Medieval art, as documented in sources such as the Stuttgart Psalter, the Bayeux Tapestry, and the Maciejowski Bible, shows spear and lance as the dominant weapons of both infantry and cavalry. By the later Middle Ages, the spear declined in favor of the lance, halberd, and pike, even as it persisted in jousting with blunted or breakable tips for scoring purposes. The continued depiction of spears in Renaissance and Baroque mythological and historical paintings, such as those in this collection, indicates a deliberate archaism, a reaching back to classical or heroic models even as actual battlefield use diminished.

The spear's afterlife in visual culture extends from its prehistoric origins to contemporary symbolic usage. As a weapon, it persisted until the modern era, where it survives in the bayonet fixed to firearms and in athletic javelin throwing, with modern sports spears achieving distances over 100 meters. The Czech athlete Jan Železný's world record of 98.48 meters, set in 1996, represents the culmination of this trajectory. Symbolically, the spear retains political resonance, as in the flag of Swaziland with its shield and two spears, and linguistic currency in expressions where speerpunt denotes a guiding principle or priority. The enduring presence of the spear in museum collections, including its 81 appearances here, attests to its capacity to condense narratives of violence, virtue, and mortality into a single, immediately legible form.