Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art

Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 432. A Roman Marble Head of a Youth, circa 2nd Century A.D., on early 17th Century Shoulders.

Property from a French Private Collection

A Roman Marble Head of a Youth, circa 2nd Century A.D., on early 17th Century Shoulders

VAT reduced rateUK: Greenford Park Warehouse

Estimate

15,000 - 25,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

turned to his left, with slightly opened mouth, his eyes with incised irises and drilled crescentic pupils, the hair composed of crescentic locks, and surmounted by an olive(?) wreath, the shoulders with sword strap and chlamys.

 

Total height 64.5 cm.

Head alone 23.5 cm.

Cardinal Alessandro Peretti di Montalto (1571-1623), Villa Montalto, Rome

recalled by the present owner to have been acquired from a private collection, probably European, in the early 1960s


Published

drawing, Codex Montalto, 1630s, fol. 40 (Anna Seidel, Der Codex Montalto, Mainz, 2016, p. 106, fol. 40, illus.)

The present lot is part of the collection sold at Sotheby's, Paris: Saint-Sulpice, l'écrin d'un collectionneur, September 25th, 2024.


The ancient head was reworked in the early 17th century, as evidenced by the peculiar proportions of the cranium. The wreath appears to be carved entirely de novo. The arrangement of the hair in the right profile bears some resemblance to the type of the sandal-tying Hermes (see a replica in Copenhagen: arachne.dainst.org/entity/1140478).

 

The present bust is first recorded in the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Peretti Montalto (1571-1623) in his villa in Rome. This sumptuous villa was built by Pope Sixtus V. (d. 1590), but its immense art collection mostly assembled by the Cardinal, the Pope’s great-nephew. An album of drawings, created in the 1630s and currently in a private collection, illustrates 275 sculptures of the Montalto collection. The present bust appears on folio 40 of this album. Other sculptures from the Montalto collection documented in this album and sold at Sotheby’s London include a seated statue of Apollo, sold June 12th, 2017, no. 19, and a head of Herakles, sold July 2nd, 2019, no. 239.

 

Almost identical shoulders were used for another bust from the Montalto collection (Seidel cit., p. 180, fol. 204, illus.), now in Houghton Hall (arachne.dainst.org/entity/1067656).

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