CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE HEAD OF BACCHUS
CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.
9 3/8 in. (23.8 cm.) high

Provenance

Private collection, UK.
Antiquities, Christie's, London, 10 December 1981, lot 220.
Private collection, Australia, acquired from the above.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Cf. L. Budde and R. Nicholls, A Catalogue of the Greek and Roman Sculpture in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1967, no. 106, p. 67, pl. 35, and 'Marble head of a deity wearing a Dionysiac fillet', Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 1992.11.66, a Roman copy after a Greek original found on the south slope of the Athenian Acropolis in 1886. The Metropolitan Museum of Art example preserves much of the original sculpture's polychromy, demonstrating that red paint was used to colour the fillet, embellish the hair (which was gilded), and define the lips, eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes. The traces of original red pigment in the hair and on the fillet of the present lot is an intriguing similarity.

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