CLASSICAL PERIOD, CIRCA EARLY 5TH CENTURY B.C.

Details

A GREEK BRONZE VOTIVE BULL
CLASSICAL PERIOD, CIRCA EARLY 5TH CENTURY B.C.
4 in. (10 cm.) long

Provenance

Art Market, by 1958.
Colonel Norman Colville, M.C. (1893-1974), Cornwall.
The Property of the late Colonel N.R. Colville, M.C., F.S.A.; Antiquities, Sotheby's, London, 21 April 1975, lot 300.
with Gordian Weber Kunsthandel, Cologne, 2010.

Literature

J. Heinrichs, "THARSYMACHO ARCHONTOS: Eine bronzene Stierplastik des frühen 5. Jh. v. Chr., phokische Triobole und die delphische Felsinschrift der Labyaden", in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 175, 2010, pp. 99-112.
Arachne Online Database no. 147227.

Sale room notice

Please note that the first line of provenance should read, ‘Art Market, by 1958.’

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The bull is represented with his head raised and the edge of his proper right hoof lightly touching the base, giving the impression of leisurely movement. This visualisation of slight movement corresponds to the transition from the Archaic to Early Classical style that took place in the first decades of the 5th century B.C. The bull's forehead is decorated with a star rosette, similar to the depiction found on a silver Triobol coin from Phokis, a region in central Greece that included Delphi, of the same period, cf. B.M.C. 8.23-31.
A dedicatory inscription reading: “Tharsymacho Archontos” stretches across its right flank. For a similar bronze votive bull at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, see acc. no. 20.37.4.

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