A patinated bronze jug with bulbous piriform body, narrow neck with rolled rim and open spout; handle with figure of Juno standing robed holding a goose to her chest; below a facing putto mask with frame of curls.

PROVENANCE:
Property of a London gentleman; acquired on the UK art market since 2011; previously in English collections since before 2000; this lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD certificate number no.163380-10068.

LITERATURE:
Cf. Roberts, P., Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, London, 2013, item 49, for profile; Rolland, H., Bronzes Antiques de Haute Provence, Paris, 1965, for figural handles.

FOOTNOTES:
The goddess Juno was associated with geese and a flock of these birds was kept in her temple on the Capitoline hill in Rome. The ancient writer Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his work Antiquitates Romanae notes that an annual procession carried Juno's image in the form of a goose from the temple of Juno Moneta to the Capitoline temple. It finally placed the image between the cellae of Jupiter and Minerva.