A ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS FRAGMENT

CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS FRAGMENT
CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.
From the right front corner of a sarcophagus, sculpted in high relief with Apollo, depicted nude but for a mantle pinned on his right shoulder and draped over his left shoulder and right leg, his centrally-parted hair arranged in a top-knot, holding his kithara in his left hand, resting it on his raised left knee, his foot on a rocky outcrop, a bird below, with a winged griffin between his legs, its head turned back, preserving part of an oak tree along the upper edge, and the right foot from a draped figure on the bottom left, the short end of the sarcophagus with a feline paw in shallow relief
23 in. (58.4 cm.) high

Provenance

Dr Benjamin Rowland (1904-1972), USA.
with Hurst Gallery, Cambridge, MA, 1997.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 11 June 2003, lot 197.
Archéologie Fayez Barakat; Pierre Bergé, Paris, 14 December 2009, lot 107.

Dr Rowland was a noted Harvard University professor of art history and art collector.

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Lot Essay

This fragment is likely from a sarcophagus depicting the myth of Apollo and the satyr Marsyas. The subject was popular in Greek and Roman art and appears on Roman sarcophagi 'early in their development, and continues in frequent use through the first half of the Third Century A.D.', (A. M. McCann, Roman Sarcophagi in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1978, p. 81). For a complete example in the Galleria Doria Pamphili see no. 92 in McCann, op. cit.

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