Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art

Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 452. A Sumerian Limestone Figure of a Female Worshipper, Early Dynastic, 3rd Millennium B.C..

Property from a German Private Collection

A Sumerian Limestone Figure of a Female Worshipper, Early Dynastic, 3rd Millennium B.C.

VAT reduced rate

Estimate

30,000 - 50,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

standing with her hands clasped before her in a gesture of prayer, and wearing a long fleece mantle leaving the right shoulder and arm bare, her face with large eyes recessed for inlay and finely grooved arched eyebrows meeting at the bridge of the broad aquiline nose, her hair arranged in a ribbed coiffure with converging strands in back.


Height 32.8 cm.

said to have been on the New York art market, then in Paris

Baumgartner Collection, Frankfurt, acquired circa 1955 from W. Henrich, Frankfurt

by descent to the present owner, 2015


Published

Oscar Muscarella, The Lie Became Great. The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, Groningen, 2000, p. 160 (Early Dynastic Sumerian, no. 7), illus. on p. 467 (as modern)

Dietrich Sürenhagen, "Original oder Fälschung? Bemerkungen zu einer jüngerfrühdynastischen weiblichen 'Beter'statuette," in Joschim Marzahn and Friedrich Pedde, eds., Hauptsache Museum. Der Alte Orient im Fokus. Festschrift für Ralf-B. Wartke, Münster, 2018, pp. 91-109, figs. 1-5, and 8

An old photograph of the present lot is in the Liebighhaus Museum in Frankfurt. Based on information provided by the curator in charge, the object appears to have been offered to the museum in 1955 by Frankfurt dealer W. Henrich, together with a better preserved Sumerian limestone male worshipper figure of similar style, date, and scale now at the Liebighaus (acc. no. 1453; https://www.liebieghaus.de/de/antike/beterfigur-aus-dem-fruehen-zweistromland). For a detailed reconstruction of the early provenance of the present lot see Sürenhagen 2018, pp. 102-103; in his article, the author successfully demonstrates that O. Muscarella's concerns about the authenticity of the present figure were unwarranted. CT-scan images show that the reattached head belongs to the body.


A circa 1960 interior photograph of the present lot in the Baumgartner Collection is in the current owner's possession. It shows the eclectic taste with which the collection was assembled and includes a few other antiquities, such as two Egyptian bronze figures and two Cycladic figures.


For a related figure from Kafajah, see H. Frankfort, More Sculpture from the Diyala Region (Oriental Institute Publications, vol. 60), 1943, p. 94 A. B. Also see Sotheby's, New York, June 7th, 2007, no. 81.

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