A GREEK BRONZE FIGURE OF A QUEEN OR GODDESS

HELLENISTIC PERIOD, CIRCA LATE 2ND-EARLY 1ST CENTURY B.C.

Details

A GREEK BRONZE FIGURE OF A QUEEN OR GODDESS
HELLENISTIC PERIOD, CIRCA LATE 2ND-EARLY 1ST CENTURY B.C.
Depicted standing, wearing a full-length chiton and enveloped in a himation, with her right arm wrapped in the arm-sling pose at the front of her chest and holding the edge of the mantle draping from her left shoulder and wrapped tightly around her left arm, falling across the length of her body, with diagonal folds along the weight-bearing left leg, swallow-tail folds cascading below her left arm, and "press folds" horizontally along her right side and shoulder, her toes emerging from below her hem, adorned with bracelets on each wrist and a ring on her left hand, her long oval face with prominent pointed nose and dimpled chin, the thin lips with the philtrum overhanging the lower lip, the unarticulated eyes with thick lids, her hair center parted and rolled back below a wide diadem, a thick cork-screw curl falling onto each cheek, her coiffure then pulled back into a chignon, obscured by her himation, which is pulled up as a veil at the back, standing atop a high socle, the cylindrical shaft with incised ivy tendrils knotted at the back, with plain molding above and below, on a square base
12¾ in. (32.4 cm.) high

Provenance

European Private Collection, early 1980s.

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Lot Essay

The proportions of this female, with broad hips, narrow shoulders and long attenuated torso and hands, suggest a date in the late 2nd-early 1st century B.C. Her facial features with a down-turned nose, thin lips and dimpled golf-ball chin resemble portraits of the Ptolemaic queens. Coin portraits of Arsinoe II and Berenike II portray the queens with their veils pulled up over a chignon and thick diadem in the same manner as the present example (see pl. 75.5-7 in Smith, Hellenistic Royal Portraits). The cork-screw curls along the cheeks recall depictions of the goddess Isis, as well as of the Ptolemaic Queens in the guise of the goddess.

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