A Marble Figure of Asklepios, Roman Imperial, circa 2nd Century A.D.

based on a Greek original of the 3rd Century B.C., the god standing with his weight on the right leg and resting on a missing staff, and wearing a himation draped over his left shoulder and arm.

French private collection, 1980s
Artemis Fine Arts, Ltd., London
American private collection, early 1990s

Sotheby's, New York, June 7th, 2005, no. 17, illus.

Chips on raised areas such as drapery folds and finger tips and knuckles, surface slightly worn and with scattered areas of dark incrustation.
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For a closely related marble statuette of the weary Asklepios in the British Museum (inv. no. 1694), once in the Strangford Collection, see A.H. Smith, A catalogue of sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, vol. III, London, 1904, p. 74 (LIMC II, p. 886, no. 314). Also see the marble statuette in the Archaeological Museum in Rhodes (LIMC II, p. 886, no. 315), found together with a figure of Hygeia, the goddess of Health. Both these figures of Asklepios are dated to the 2nd Century A.D.

The Hellenistic Asklepios type upon which the present Roman copy is based is called the "London-Berlin" type after the above-mentioned statuette in London and a bronze figure in Berlin (for the latter see R. and E. Boehringer, Homer, Bildnisse und Nachweise, vol. I, Breslau, 1939, p. 139, pls. 114-118; LIMC, vol. II, p. 886, no. 316).