Various Properties
A Cypriot Limestone Head of a Priest or Votary, circa 1st half of the 5th Century B.C.
Lot Closed
July 5, 02:32 PM GMT
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
A Cypriot Limestone Head of a Priest or Votary
circa 1st half of the 5th Century B.C.
wearing a conical headdress with fragmentary crown, his♊ face with pointed chin, finely carved mouth with indented philtrum, long nose, and large almond-shaped eyes beneath finely arched eyebrows, the back carved flat.
Height 15.6 cm.
Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832-1904)
The Metropolitan Museu☂m of Art, New York, acquired from the above, and deaccessioned in the 1920s
Sotheby's, New York, Jun♊e 18th, 1991, no. 217,⛦ illus.
The Cyprus Museum, Jacksonville, North Carolina (Leland Little, Hillsborough𝐆, North Carolina, June 15th, 2018, no. 2046)
acquired by the present owners at a𒊎uction in the United States
Published
L. Palma di Cesnola, A descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 1, New York, 1885, no. 242, pl. 61
The ebonised wood base, painted with the number 160, is typical of the ones used for Cesnola's collection and bears an old label underneath inscribed in ink as follows: "LIMESTONE HEAD / 700-600 B.C. / Found in temple / Golgoi / Cyprus / from Cesnola Coll. Met. Mus." The head itself is twice inscribed in black ink with the number 220 and on the front of the neck bears a small label printed with the number 337 (repeated in red paint on the underside). The present head does not seem to match the sculpture numbered 337 in the first volume of Cesnola's Atlas and illustrated on pl. LIII, but rather t🎃he head numbered 242 in that publication: . This discrepancy is most likely due to a clerical error made during the composition of the volume.