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_900x900.jpg "Roman Marble Head of Euripides")
_200x200.jpg "Roman Marble Head of Euripides")
.jpg "Roman Marble Head of Euripides")
LOT 0143
Roman Marble Head of Euripides
2ND CENTURY A.D.
9 7/8 in. (7.46 kg, 25 cm).
An impressive carved herm of the tragic author of the tragic author Euripides, portrayed as an elderly man with full beard and long hair forming compact, slightly wavy strands, radiating from a single point at the back of the head and combed forwards over the forehead; heavy brow and small mouth; cracked and repaired.
ProvenanceEnglish private collection, acquired in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
David Cambridge, Cheltenham.
with Galerie Chenel, Paris, acquired from the above in 1998.
French private collection, acquired from the above in 1999/2000.
Ancient Marbles, Classical Sculpture and works of art; Sotheby's, London, 13 June 2016, no.49.
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.12191-222443.
Cf. for the famous copy in Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli see Gasparri, C., (ed.), Le sculture Farnese, vol.2, 2009, pp.32ff., no.14, pl.14; cf. Richter, G.M.A., The Portraits of the Greeks, Vol. I, London, 1965, pp.133-140, illus.717-767, for an overview of the known ancient copies of the portrait of Euripides; among them we remember the one of the Getty Museum (inv. no.79.AA.133), a Roman copy from Lesbos dated at 2nd century A.D., in Antonaccio, C. M. ‘Style, Reuse, and Context in a Roman Portrait at Princeton,’ in Archaeologischer Anzeiger 3, (1992), pp.414-452, p.449, no.30.
FootnotesEuripides was a classical Athenian playwright and one of the three great tragedians of ancient Greece, alongside Aeschylus and Sophocles. Born in 480 B.C., his work is renowned for its complex characters and psychological depth, often exploring the darker aspects of human nature and societal norms. Euripides' plays, such as Medea, The Bacchae, and Hippolytus, are marked by their innovative use of mythological themes to comment on contemporary issues.
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AUCTIONS:
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LOT 0143
Roman Marble Head of Euripides
Estimate £18,000 - 24,000€20,880 - 27,840 (for guidance only)$24,300 - 32,400 (for guidance only)
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Roman Glass Toilet Bottle
1st century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £195
With globular body, short everted rim and cylindrical neck, concave base. 73 grams, 10 cm
Ex London, UK, collection, 1980-1990s.
The bottle should be associated with Isings form 6 or Tommaso type 7. Small bottles of this typology are among the earliest known blown glass. The everted rim seems to distinguish examples made in Italy and the western Mediterranean provinces from those of the Eastern Mediterranean, on which the rim is usually folded in the form of a flange. -
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Early 1st century A.D. and laterSold for (Inc. bp): £585
Of piriform shape with iridescent surfaces, decorated with later applied fruiting vines in high-relief, a stylised rosette to the vessel's base; restored; rim chipped. 186 grams, 11.5 cm
London gentleman; acquired by his father in the 1970s; thence by descent. Private collection, England. -
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2nd-3rd century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £247
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From a collection acquired on the UK art market from various auction houses and collections mostly before 2000. From an important Cambridgeshire estate; thence by descent.
