Details

LOT 0015

Cypriot Limestone Bull Statue

CYPRO-ARCHAIC I, 750-600 B.C.

9 1/2 in. (1.29 kg total, 24 cm including stand).

Carved in the round as an advancing bull with its tail placed between the hindlegs, thick fur to the throat; the fill between the legs with traces of cross-hatching in red pigment; old collector's label '477' to flange base; mounted on an old wooden collector's stand with painted numeral '193' to one face. [No Reserve]

Provenance

Base and collection numbers suggesting it may have been deaccessioned from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Joseph Klein collection, formed in New York between 1941-1980, thence by descent.
with Bonhams, London, 24 October 2012, no.3.
From an important Cambridgeshire estate; thence by descent.

Published

L.P. di Cesnola, A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, vol. I, Boston, 1885, pl. 98.

Literature

Cf. Hastings, E.A., The Sculpture from the Sacred Animal Necropolis at North Saqqâra 1964-76, London, 1997, pl. LV, for a bull or bull calf statue associated with the Apis cult.

Footnotes

This possibly represents a bull or bull calf associated with the Apis cult.