A Roman Marble Portrait Bust of a Woman, Augustan, circa early 1st Century A.D.
Auction Closed
December 7, 04:32 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
A Roman Marble Portrait Bust of a Woman
Augustan, circa early 1st Century A.D.
carved for insertion into a herm, wearing a stola, her head turned slightly to her left, her long hair drawn back over the ears in multiple braided strands, divided by a single braid pulled up above the forehead, falling in a fringe of ringlets over the forehead and temples, and tied over the nape of the neck, the hair in back with a circular vertical hole reaching down to the bottom of the bust; no restorations.
Height 41 cm.; height of face 15.5 cm.
Mssrs. Pizzardi and Barberi, Ascona, early 1960s
Luigi Hagner, Lugano-Cureglia, late 1960s
Donati Arte Classica, Lugano
Rupert Wace 🐽Ancient Art, 𒁏acquired from the above in 2006
Jean-David Cahn, Basel, acquired from the above
Belgian private collection, acquired from the above in 2011 (Sotheby's, London, ꧂November 29th, 2017, no𓆉. 60)
acquired by the present owner at the above sale
Published
Rupert Wace Ancient Art, London, In Our Own Image: Gods and Mortals in Ancient Art, 2008, no. 21, illus.
Sothe🅷by’s, New York, June 4th, 2009, no. 112, illus.
For a related example in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, inv. no. 6247, probably from the time of Livia, see M. Guidobaldi, ed., Ercolano. Tre secoli di scoperte, exh. cat., Naples, 2008, p. 279f., no. 113. Also see J. Raeder, Die antiken Skulpturen in Petworth House, 2000, pp. 179ff., no. 64, pl. 81f.; the author (op. cit., p. 180) notes that late Augustan portrait coiffures tend to combine heterogenous elements freely, such as the thin central braid which appears mostly on portraits of girls. For the fringe of ringlets over the forehead also see a head in the J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. no. 72.AA.129 (J. Frel, Roman Portraits in the Getty Museum, 1981, p. 34, no. 19).
