Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art

Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 445. A Roman Marble Funerary Relief, 1st half of the 2nd Century A.D..

Property from a Norwegian Private Collection

A Roman Marble Funerary Relief, 1st half of the 2nd Century A.D.

VAT reduced rateUK: Greenford Park Warehouse

Live auction begins on:

December 3, 03:30 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 50,000 GBP

Bid

20,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

carved in high relief with a man and woman joining hands, the man wearing boots, short tunic, and himation slung around the right hip and over the left shoulder, his bent right arm holding a cylindrical object, the woman wearing a long chiton girdled beneath the breast and buttoned on the upper arm, and a himation draped over the left shoulder and around the lower body, her head with centrally parted hair surmounted by an encircling braid, another man standing by their side, his face with more mature features than the other man's and wearing the same garb, his bent left arm holding an unidentified object.

 

46.5 by 49.5 by 9 cm.

Hans Peter L'Orange (1903-1983), founder and director of the Norwegian Institute in Rome, acquired on the Roman art market between the two World Wars

by descent to the present owner from the above


Published

Siri Sande, "Ein Handwerker-Relief in norwegischem Privatbesitz," Symbolae Osloenses, vol. 53, 1978, pp. 183ff., figs. 1ff.

Gerhard Zimmer, "Römische Handwerker," in: Hildegard Temporini, ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. II.12.3, Berlin, 1985, p. 209, pl. 5,1

Gerhard Zimmer, Book review of: Natalie Kampen, Roman Working Women in Ostia, in Gnomon, vol. 54, H.8, 1982, p. 852

The couple's ostentatious handshake (dextrarum iunctio) illustrates their status as legally married Roman citizens. For the woman's hairstyle see an early Hadrianic portrait head at Petworth (arachne.dainst.org/entity/1084701). The sculptural style is close to a Roman funerary relief in the Vatican (arachne.dainst.org/entity/1081244). 

 

Sande (op. cit.) identifies the object held by the man on the left as a straightedge and therefore the man himself as a mason. Roman Funerary reliefs of craftsmen usually illustrate them at work (e.g., see a relief of a potter and his wife in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond: https://vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-12951853/, and a sarcophagus relief with shoemaker and rope-maker: arachne.dainst.org/entity/1077360).

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