AN ETRUSCAN BRONZE DIOSKOUROS

CIRCA 3RD-2ND CENTURY B.C.

Details

AN ETRUSCAN BRONZE DIOSKOUROS
CIRCA 3RD-2ND CENTURY B.C.
Either Castur (Castor) or Pultuce (Pollux), the twin sons of Tinia (Zeus), inspired by portraits of Alexander the Great, the muscular youthful deity wearing a short mantle over his left shoulder and around his waist, standing with his weight on his right leg, the left pulled back and bent at the knee, his left arm raised, the fingers curled around a now-missing attribute, presumably a scepter, offering an egg in his lowered right hand, his hair with the characteristic upswept locks, or anastole, at the forehead, and bound in a diadem with three small mortices at the front for attachment of attributes, his brow furrowed, the eyes recessed for now-missing inlays
12 1/8 in. (30.8 cm.) high

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 6 June 1989, lot 517.
with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, 1989.

Literature

C.C. Vermeule and J.M. Eisenberg, Catalogue of the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Bronzes in the Collection of John Kluge, New York and Boston, 1992, no. 89-80.

Lot Essay

For an Etruscan bronze votive which also has "the serious and pathetic expression of the face, the arrangement of the locks above the forehead, and the studied twist of the head" which "are clearly inspired by portraits of Alexander the Great" see no. 81 in True, et al., A Passion for Antiquities: Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.
Vermeule and Eisenberg inform (op. cit., p. 30) that "images of Alexander the Great in Etruria," as in the Greek and Roman worlds, "can be identified as Dioskouroi." The presence of the egg in the right hand of the Morven bronze confirms this identification. For images of the Dioskouroi with the egg of Helen, their sister, on Etruscan red-figured pottery and bronze mirrors, see nos. 71-76 in De Puma, "Dioskouroi/Tinas Cliniar" in LIMC.

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