Roman Bronze Bird Finial

Plano-convex type with transverse piercing. 2.55 grams, 15 mm



From the London collection of the late Mr S.M., 1969-1999.

Carved in three-quarter view, with hair dressed in a chignon with frontal band and wavy segments; soft facial features with much detailing remaining to the proper right eye and mouth; likely a frieze fragment; mounted on an old collector's display stand with typed label 'Marble, woman's head / Egypt / C.25-100 A.D. / Cat.No. 6169'. 8.45 kg, 39 cm high



Acquired in trade from the San Franciscanum Museum, Israel, prior to 1980. with Archaeologia, pre 1983, Switzerland and Canada. 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.12964-242755.

The arrangement of the hair is characteristic of female portraits dating between the late Severan and Tetrarchic periods. The head, due to the treatment of the hair, finds comparisons with a female portrait in the Museo Nazionale Romano, depicting an elderly woman of the Antonine era, and with another female portrait in the same museum, dated to the third decade of the 3rd century A.D., reworked in the Tetrarchic period, and which showed a Severan so-called Nest Frisur hairstyle. The sculpture in question can therefore be dated between the full 3rd century A.D. and the first decades of the 4th century A.D. based on the hairstyle, the shape of eyes and eyebrows.

Modelled as a running boar on a baseline, catchplate and pinlugs on the reverse. 11.3 grams, 38 mm



Ex Wiltshire, UK, collection, 1990s.