A GREEK GOLD MASK
This lot is offered without reserve. PROPERTY FROM A NEW YORK CITY PRIVATE COLLECTION
A GREEK GOLD MASK

ARCHAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 6TH CENTURY B.C.

Details
A GREEK GOLD MASK
ARCHAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 6TH CENTURY B.C.
6 3⁄8 in. (16.1 cm.) high
Provenance
Lieutenant General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (1827-1900), Farnham, Dorset, acquired by 1884; thence by continuous descent to Stella Edith Pitt-Rivers (1913-1994), U.K.
Acquired by the current owner by 1992.
Literature
G.F. Waldo Johnson, et al., Augustus Henry Lane Fox-Pitt-Rivers: Catalogue of his Archaeological and Anthropological Collections, vol. II, Dorset, 1884-1891, p. 15.
Exhibited
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992-2022 (Loan no. L.1992.54.15).
Special notice

This lot is offered without reserve.

Brought to you by

Hannah Fox Solomon
Hannah Fox Solomon Head of Department, Senior Specialist

Lot Essay

This mask, hammered from thin gold sheet and then pressed over a matrix, was likely once attached to an Illyrian helmet via the perforations along its upper edge. The practice of combining gold masks and helmets is well documented from a number of sites across the Greek world and likely had a funerary or religious significance. For a similar example still attached to the helmet, see no. 96 in S. Descamps-Lequime, Au royaume d'Alexandre le Grand: La Macédoine antique.
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