An Etruscan Bronze Patera Handle, 4th/3rd Century B.C.

Auction Closed

July 3, 02:32 PM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

An Etruscan Bronze Patera Handle

4th/3rd Century B.C.

in the form of the figure of a woman or deity, probably the nymph Lasa, standing on a circular base with the weight on her right leg, lifting the folds of her garment with her left hand, and resting her right hand on her hip, her head turned to her left, and wearing shoes, armlet, necklace, and mantle falling from the left shoulder between the breasts, belted at the waist, and leaving most of the front of her body bare, her long hair arranged in circular curls over the forehead, lifted up on top of the head, bound in a broad beaded diadem in the back, and falling in long wavy locks over the shoulders and nape of the neck, an indentation on top of the head for attachment of the bowl, a tenon on the upper back for attachment of the fragmentary wings, a suspension ring underneath the base.

Height with suspension ring 17.5 cm.

Alfred Bourguignon (1839-1905), Naples (Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Maurice Delestre, commissaire-priseur, Arthur Sambon and Ercole Canessa, experts, Collection d'antiquités grecques et romaines provenant de Naples, March 18th-20th, 1901, no. 221, pl. VI: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/drouot1901_03_18/0107)

Edith Cesar, New York

acquired by the current owner on the American art market

Published

Salomon Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, vol. 3, Paris, 1920, p. 76, no. 2 (line drawing after the 1901 catalogue plate)

For a patera handle of similar form once in the Castellani Collection see arachne.dainst.org/entity/3883898. For another example with wings preserved see R. de Puma, Etruscan Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013, no. 6.81a, pp. 192 and 237 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/246542). For the manner in which the wings would have been attached to the tenon on the back see the back view of https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/10403A.

On the art dealer Alfred Bourguigon see J. Voukelatos, "The Greek Vase Collection of Alfred Bourguignon," in: La belle époque des collectionneurs d'antiques en Europe (Histoire et archéologie), 2022, pp. 39ff.