LOT 0190

Roman Bronze Figure of Serapis

1ST CENTURY B.C.-1ST CENTURY A.D.

4 3/4 in. (233 grams total, 12 cm high excluding stand).

Depicted seated with his feet resting on a low stool, left hand raised and once holding sceptre or a staff; a modius crown resting on his curly hair, decorated with three incised olive sprays; dressed in a chiton and a draped himation, with his sandal-clad feet showing from beneath the folds of his garments; mounted on a custom-made display stand.

Private collection, Florida, USA, 1980s.
European private collection, acquired in 2002.

Accompanied by a copy of an Art Loss Register certificate, no.S00019356.
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.12611-234679.
This lot has been cleared against the Art Loss Register database, and is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

Cf. Reinach, S., Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, Paris, 1897, p.19, nos.1-2, for identical type; Kent Hill, D., ‘Material on the cult of Serapis’ in American School of Classical studies in Athens, 1946, pp.60-72, fig.3, p.65; Gordon, R., Romanising Oriental Gods, Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras, Leiden-Boston, 2008, pl.2.

The facial features are of the bearded Hellenistic type, well known by the features of the seated cult statue from the Serapeum in Alexandria and the prototypes of a number of separated heads or busts which also survive in innumerable copies in all the corners of the Roman Empire. A statue made by the Hellenistic sculptor Bryaxis was the model for this statuette and the successive iconography.