LOT 0051

Greek Marble Head of a Youth

EARLY 5TH CENTURY B.C.

7 1/8 in. (879 grams total, 18 cm high including stand).

Carved in the round; semi-naturalistic anatomic and facial detailing, hair gathered loosely at the neck and tied with a taenia knotted at the nape of the neck; mounted on a custom-made display base.

Ex old European private property, by inheritance to the previous owner.
Ex Schuler Auktionen, Zürich, 10 December 2020, no.1211.

Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D’Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate number no.11817-206512.

Cf. Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession no.1992.11.60, for a similar marble head of a Kouros, c.525-475 B.C., in Zimmerman, J.-L., Collection de la Fondation Thétis: Développements de l'Art Grec de la Préhistoire à Rome, Geneva, 1987, p.47, no.88; cf. also a slightly later head with tight, defined curls, likely to have come from a group within a funerary naiskos, no. 1972.118.111 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in Von Bothmer, D. and d'Harnoncourt, R., Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities: An Exhibition from the Collection of Walter Cummings Baker, Esq. no. 59, p. 10, pl. 20, 1950, New York; see also Dörig, J., The Olympia Master and his collaborators, Leiden-New York-Köln-København, 1987.

The small statuette to which the head belonged was probably that of a naked youth, the so-called kouros, typical of archaic Greek sculpture from the 7th century B.C. onwards.