ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

AN EGYPTIAN STUCCO MUMMY MASK OF A WOMAN
ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.
Depicted with center-parted hair scalloped along her forehead and falling in thick ringlets behind her ears, a winged solar disk at the back of her head, wearing beaded hoop earrings, her lips pursed into a slight smile, preserving black pigment for the hair and eyes
8 in. (20.3 cm.) high

Provenance

The Helena Rubinstein Collection; Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 22-23 April 1966, lot 242.

Special notice

Christie's is selling all lots in this sale as agent for an organization which holds a State of New York Exempt Organization certificate. Seller explicitly reserves all trademark and trade name rights and rights of privacy and publicity in the name and image of Doris Duke. No buyer of any property in this sale will acquire any right to use the Doris Duke name or image. Seller further explicitly reserves all copyright rights in designs or other copyrightable works included in the property offered for sale. No buyer of any property in the sale will acquire the rights to reproduce, distribute copies of, or prepare derivative works of such designs or copyrightable works.

Lot Essay

In the first decades of the 20th Century, Helena Rubenstein, later Princess Gourielli-Tchkonia, the cosmetics magnate, was a precocious and influential collector of art, ancient, African, and contemporary. In her Paris, London and New York homes these pieces were displayed together, as Madame Rubenstein was, like many of the contemporary artists she patronized, tremendously influenced by the earlier and non-Western cultures. Often she mounted artwork from her collections in her business establishments in London, Paris, New York and Buenos Aires, as many of these pieces, the sculptures of Elie Nadelman, for example, became her trademark symbols of the beautification of the modern woman.

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