A Hellenistic Terracotta Group of a Hunter and his Family, signed by Apollonios, circa early 1st Century A.D.

the young man, perhaps Meleager, standing in a relaxed attitude with his legs crossed, his right hand behind his back, resting his left hand on his wife's shoulder, and wearing a chlamys fastened with a brooch on his right shoulder, a dog at his feet, the young woman seated on a rocky outcrop, looking up at her husband, holding a small boy on her lap, and wearing a himation loosely draped over a chiton falling from her right shoulder and leaving her breast bare, the child with Eros braid and clasping a pet(?) in his arms, the tall base decorated in relief with a hunter wearing a petasos and wielding his spear at a leaping boar, perhaps a depiction of Meleager killing the Calydonian Boar, the coropolast's signature ΑΠΟΛΛΟΝΙΟΥ ("[the work] of Apollonios") etched into the back prior to firing, remains of gesso and pigment.

André Emmerich, Inc., Zurich and New York, and Herbert A. Cahn, Münzen und Medaillen, Basel, 1975/1976
Tradart, Geneva
acquired from the above by the current owner on May 3rd, 2010

André Emmerich Gallery, Inc., Zurich and New York, Classical Antiquity. An exhibition organized in cooperation with Münzen und Medaillen AG, Basle, Switzerland, November 22nd, 1975-January 10th, 1976, no. 36, illus.

Front of base repaired from at least 6 fragments, with over-painting across the joints and shallow chip on body of bore. Areas of white calcium deposit on the back, light brownish incrustation overall in front. Original pigments appear more clearly on proper-left forearm of leaning hunter.
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For related terracotta figures standing on tall bases decorated in relief see the statuettes of Asklepios and Aphrodite from Corfu in the British Museum, inv. nos. 1868,0110.742-743 (H. B. Walters, Catalogue of the terracottas in the Department of Greek and Roman antiquities, British Museum, 1903, nos. C52, pl. 24, and C53). Also see a terracotta herm in Munich (F. Hamdorf, Die figürlichen Terrakotten der Staatlichen Antikensammlungen München, vol. 2, 2014, p. 413, no. E167).

For the standing youth cf. the type of the Paris Lansdowne: C. Giroire and D. Roger, eds., Roman Art from the Louvre, 2007, p. 84, no. 25. For the seated woman cf. the type of a statue in Vicenza: V. Galliazzo, Sculture greche e romane del Museo Civico di Vicenza, 1976, pp. 68ff., no. 17. The 1972 catalogue entry suggests that the present group "recalls a Hellenistic type of funerary monument" showing a heroised family.