Roman Style Bronze Walking Phallus

20TH CENTURY A.D.

6 1/8 in. (374 grams, 15.5 cm including stand).

Figure modelled in the round, the upper body a phallus, the lower body wearing a tunic and in a dancing pose, after the antique; mounted on a custom-made stand. [No Reserve]

Provenance

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.

Literature

Cf. Rolland, H., Bronzes Antiques de Haute Provence, Paris, 1965, items 425-437, for similar original figures.

Footnotes

In antiquity the phallic upper part would normally have have been covered by a separate bell-shaped casting of a grotesque figure wearing a waist-length hooded cape, probably inside a Gallo-Roman bronze statuette of the fertility god Priapus.

CONDITION

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LOT 1998