Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art
Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art
Another Property
A Roman Bronze Figure of a Goddess, Augustan, late 1st Century B.C./early 1st Century A.D.
Estimate
225,000 - 275,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
standing with the weight on her left leg and head turned to her right, and wearing sandals, chiton, and peplos fastened on each shoulder and falling in long folds down her right side, the peplos formerly fastened with separately cast brooches probably made of silver, the missing arms cast separately, her finely modeled face with straight nose and eyes with recessed pupils, her centrally parted wavy hair bound in a chignon and surmounted by a stephane decorated with inlaid silver rosettes.
Height 17.8 cm.
Jules Charvet (1824-1882), Château du Donjon, Le Pecq
Julien Gréau, Troyes, acquired between 1866 and 1878 (Drouot, Paris, Collection Julien Gréau. Catalogue des bronzes antiques et des objets d'art du Moyen-âge et de la Renaissance, June 1st-9th, 1885, no. 935, pl. XXVII)
acquired by the present owner prior to 2008
Published
Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l'industrie, Exposition de 1865. Palais de l'Industrie. Musée rétrospectif, Catalogue, Fascicule 2, Paris, 1865, p. 7, no. 66
François Lenormant, "Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts appliqués à l'Industrie. Musée rétrospectif. Les antiques," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1866, vol. I, p. 174, illus. on p. 175
François Lenormant, "Books and Monuments Bearing upon Figured Representations of Antiquity," The Contemporary Review, London, vol. XXXIII, September 1878, p. 849
Olivier Rayet, "L'art grec au Trocadéro," in Louis Gonse, ed., L'art ancien à l'exposition de 1878, Paris, 1879, pp. 75-76, illus. on p. 70
Friedrich Wieseler, "Archäologische Excurse zu Pausanias I,24,3 und I,27,8," Nachrichten von der königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften und der Georg-Augusts-Universität, 1886, p. 45
Karl Sittl, Archäologie der Kunst, Munich, 1895, p. 237, note 18
Salomon Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, vol. II.2, Paris, 1908, p. 333, no.1
International Herald Tribune, advertising supplement, Saturday-Sunday, January 7th-8th, 2006, p. 12, illus.
Apollo Magazine, February 2006, p. 27 (advertisement)
The New York Times, Sunday, March 18th, 2007, section 3, p. 3, illus.
Sotheby's, New York, December 10th, 2008, no. 34, illus.
Musée rétrospectif, Palais de l'Industrie, Champs-Elysées, Paris, 1865
Exposition Universelle (Third Paris World's Fair), Palais du Trocadéro, Paris, May 1st to November 10th, 1878
The present figure is a fine example of eclecticism in ancient art. While the composition and peplos hark back to Greek art of the 1st half of the 5th Century B.C. (the so-called Severe Style), the rendering of the legs showing through the garment is more reminiscent of late Hellenistic sculpture. For the latter detail cf. the Iuno Ludovisi: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/552590/juno.
The collecting interests of Jean-Baptiste Jules Charvet, born at Mâcon in 1824, included ancient bronzes as well as medieval sculptures, but of particular value were his vast collections of French medieval and Gothic seals as well as of ancient glass, the latter having been published by Wilhelm Froehner in 1879 (La verrerie antique, description de la collection Charvet). From 1864 onwards Charvet built a mansion near Saint-Germain-en-Laye that became known as the "château du Donjon". Realized after his own architectural designs, its interior was meant to evoke a certain gothic atmosphere. For an overview of Charvet’s collections see Sophie Cueille, "Jules Charvet (1824-1882), antiquaire parisien et alpicois," in: J.-Y. Ribault, ed., Mécènes et collectionneurs. Actes du 121e congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, Nice, 1996, vol. 1, 1999, pp. 223-237.
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