A ROMAN BRONZE APOLLO

CIRCA LATE 1ST-EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN BRONZE APOLLO
CIRCA LATE 1ST-EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.
The tall youthful god depicted nude, standing with his weight on his right leg, leaning to his left with his left foot resting atop the omphalos, his left forearm on his knee, his wrist hanging languidly, holding his right hand out before him with his fingers curled around a now-missing attribute, presumably a laurel branch, his long center-parted hair bound in a twisted band of copper and silver and tied in an elaborate top-knot, with long curling tresses falling in back onto his shoulders, his articulated eyes in silver, his phallus also in silver, the omphalos patterned with crosshatching, on a tall pedestal base with raking moldings
10 5/8 in. (27 cm.) high

Provenance

with Palladion Antike Kunst, Basel, 1976 (Katalog, no. 109).
with Christopher Sheppard, London.
with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, 1985 (Art of the Ancient World, vol. IV, no. 280).

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. 89-75.

Lot Essay

Depictions of Apollo in association with the omphalos usually show him seated upon it, as with the coinage of Antiochos I, circa 280-261 B.C. (see pl. 555 in Jenkins, Ancient Greek Coins). A Roman marble in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Venice (no. 238 in Lambrinudakis, et al., "Apollon" in LIMC) has been wrongly restored with the god playing his kithara and resting his foot on a tree stump. This may be a true reflection of the lost Greek original on which the Morven bronze is a reflection.

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