A ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS RELIEF FRAGMENT DEPICTING ALEXANDER AND THE SIWAH ORACLE

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THE PROPERTY OF MONSIEUR FRANÇOIS ANTONOVICH Refer to Lot 32 for bibliography.

A ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS RELIEF FRAGMENT DEPICTING ALEXANDER AND THE SIWAH ORACLE

1ST CENTURY A.D.

细节

A ROMAN MARBLE SARCOPHAGUS RELIEF FRAGMENT DEPICTING ALEXANDER AND THE SIWAH ORACLE
1ST CENTURY A.D.
Showing three and a half arcaded metopes, each carved in relief with a scene, the three complete scenes comprising:
Right: the youthful Alexander asleep under a tree
Centre: a unicorn recumbent under a tree, probably a 'deified' representation of Alexander's horse Bucephalos
Left: nude Herakles with one of his sons (Telephus or Hyllus), to the right a fragmentary scene with recumbent hoofed animal
24¼ x 53/8 in. (61.5 x 13.5 cm.)

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拍品专文

PUBLISHED: Métamorphoses, pp. 91 and 344.

This fragment depicts the sleeping Alexander's premonitory dreams leading to the foundation of Alexandria and Smyrna. He is seen in the same pose on the reverse of a dekadrachm in the Museum of Boston (inv. no. 1972.14). The scene with Herakles and his son (or possibly Endymion sleeping in a cave on mount Latmos) alludes to legends linked to the founders of Macedonia, to Phrygia and to the Greeks' expedition against Troy. For a sarcophagus lid of similar shape with relief frieze unusually divided into individual fields, differing in size and the nature of their subjects, cf. G. Koch with K. Wight, Roman Funerary Sculpture, catalogue of the collections, Getty Museum, 1988, p. 36, no. 13 and also two fragments, pp. 42-43, no. 14.