A LATE ROMAN MARBLE CLIPEUS BUST OF ASKLEPIOS, LATE 4TH CENTURY A.D.
Auction Closed
July 2, 04:42 PM GMT
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
A LATE ROMAN MARBLE CLIPEUS BUST 🍌OF ASKLEPIOS, LATE 4TH CENTURY A.D.
wearing a mantle falling from his left shoulder and leaving his chest bare, his face with full beard and almond-shaped eyes with incised irises and drilled crescentic pupils, his long centrally parted hair bound in a fillet once added separately, falling in symmetrical voluted locks over the high forehead and in long deeply-drilled curls over the temples and neck, the top of the head roughly carved, a serpent carved in relief above his right shoulder; nose and left half of moustache restored.
Height 51 cm.; di𒁃ameter 45 cm.; height of head 24 c✨m.
Jean Mikas, Paris, acquired on the Paris🀅 art market in the 1930s
Georges N. Krimitsas, Antiquités, 86, rue de l'Université, Paris, inherited from 𓃲the above in the 1950s
acquired by the present owner from th🧸e above in 1998
The only other known tondo of Asklepios with serpent in the background was found on the grounds of a late 3rd Century Roman villa at Chiragan, France, together with a similar tondo depicting Hygieia (M. Bergmann, Chiragan, Aphrodisias, Konstantinopel. Zur mythologischen Skulptur der Spätantike, 1999, p. 33, pl. 6,1. 38,4; //arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/objekt/203457; //saintraymond.toulouse.fr/Medaillons-d-Hy🐎gie-et-Esculape_a111.html).
The style of the present tondo alone suggests a date in the late antique period; cf. the bust sold at Sotheby’s, London, June 13th, 2016, no. 18. A similar late antique bearded head is in Florence: V. Saladino, ed., Le antichità di Palazzo Medici Riccardi, vol. 2, 2000, p. 207f., no. 73, pl. 84. For the attribute of the snake cf. the scroll on the 4th-century Menander tondo in Cambridge, Massachusetts: C. Vorster, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, vol. 127/28, 2012/13, p. 452, fig. 42 (//www.harvardartmuseums.org/col𒐪lections/object/287968).