AN ITALIAN WHITE MARBLE GROUP OF ARIADNE AND THE PANTHER AND PEDESTAL, after Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, Ariadne naked with a vine wreath in her hair, looking ahead and lying across the back of a panther, her elbow resting on its head and holding drapery in her hand, on a rectangular base with canted angles, inscribed GALLERIA LAPINI FIRENZE, on a verde antico marble pedestal, the rectangular platform with a moulded edge and canted angles, carved on the underside with foliage, above a tapering fluted column, with circular spreading foot and octagonal base (chips to the foliate undeside of pedestal), last quarter 19th Century

AN ITALIAN WHITE MARBLE GROUP OF ARIADNE AND THE PANTHER AND PEDESTAL, after Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, Ariadne naked with a vine wreath in her hair, looking ahead and lying across the back of a panther, her elbow resting on its head and holding drapery in her hand, on a rectangular base with canted angles, inscribed GALLERIA LAPINI FIRENZE, on a verde antico marble pedestal, the rectangular platform with a moulded edge and canted angles, carved on the underside with foliage, above a tapering fluted column, with circular spreading foot and octagonal base (chips to the foliate undeside of pedestal), last quarter 19th Century

Details

AN ITALIAN WHITE MARBLE GROUP OF ARIADNE AND THE PANTHER AND PEDESTAL, after Johann Heinrich von Dannecker, Ariadne naked with a vine wreath in her hair, looking ahead and lying across the back of a panther, her elbow resting on its head and holding drapery in her hand, on a rectangular base with canted angles, inscribed GALLERIA LAPINI FIRENZE, on a verde antico marble pedestal, the rectangular platform with a moulded edge and canted angles, carved on the underside with foliage, above a tapering fluted column, with circular spreading foot and octagonal base (chips to the foliate undeside of pedestal), last quarter 19th Century

the group: 25½in. (64.7cm.) wide; 31¼in. (79.4cm.) high; 10¾in. (27.3cm.) deep
the pedestal: 29¼in. (74.3cm.) wide at top; 14½in. (36.8cm.) deep at top; 44in. (111.7cm.) high

Literature

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: H.W.Janson, Nineteenth Century Sculpture, Thames and Hudson, 1985, pp. 62-3.

Lot Essay

The present sculpture is after the celebrated work by Johann Heinrich von Dannecker (d.1841) in the State Sculpture Gallery, Frankfurt. Ariadne, daughter of the king of King Minos of Crete, having helped Theseus, whom she loved, to escape from the Labrynth was in return abandonned by him on the island of Naxos. Bacchus rescued her, consoled her and they soon were married. The vine wreaths in Ariadne's hair allude to her union with Bacchus the God of wine, as does the panther which is often depicted drawing Bacchus's Triumphal chariot. Ariadne's Heavenward gaze may also relate to the constellation that Bacchus created when he threw her jewelled crown to the Heavens.

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