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Lot Essay
As C.C. Vermeule observes (p. 180 in “Bench and Table Supports: Roman Egypt and Beyond,” in W.K. Simpson and W.M. Davis, eds., Studies in Ancient Egypt, the Aegean, and the Sudan), “The manufacture of marble furniture became a major industry in the ancient world with the rise of Roman patronage in Cicero’s time and continued through the era of great imperial country villas around Rome until the decline of secular decorative art in the fourth century A.D.” Vermeule further remarks that it was with tables and their supports - known as trapezophoroi - used to adorn townhouses and villas that the marble furniture industry “flourished in its handsomest, most commercial fashion.”
This trapezophoros belongs to a class of supports once categorized as votive reliefs until an example surmounted by a tabletop was discovered at Pompeii in 1907 (see pp. 542-543 in A. Giuliano, ed., Museo Nazionale Romano: Le Sculture, vol. I, 7, pt. 2). The type typically features a bust of a deity on the obverse and a bucranium on the reverse. The present example preserves in high relief the bust of a satyr wearing a nebris and holding a pedum behind his neck. Unique is the cuirassed torso on the reverse, which is likely unparalleled on supports (for the type of cuirass, see the example on a relief in the Centrale Montemartini, fig. 51 in R. d’Amato and A.E. Negin, Decorated Roman Armour). For a similar example preserving a bust of a satyr, see no. XXV, 8 in Guiluiano, op. cit.
The Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) ranked among the late 19th and early 20th century’s foremost dealers of Renaissance paintings and sculptures. Bardini was well connected with the major American collectors of his day, including Robert Lehman and Isabella Stewart Gardiner, and many important works with Bardini provenance are now dispersed throughout museums worldwide. While ancient art was not Bardini’s primary commercial focus, he certainly held a personal interest in the subject: a 1902 Christie’s London auction of a portion of his collection featured a few outstanding examples of Roman sculpture. His home, located in Florence’s Oltrarno quarter, included the deconsecrated church and convent of San Gregorio della Pace; today the home, along with the collection he lived with, stands as the Museo Bardini.
This trapezophoros belongs to a class of supports once categorized as votive reliefs until an example surmounted by a tabletop was discovered at Pompeii in 1907 (see pp. 542-543 in A. Giuliano, ed., Museo Nazionale Romano: Le Sculture, vol. I, 7, pt. 2). The type typically features a bust of a deity on the obverse and a bucranium on the reverse. The present example preserves in high relief the bust of a satyr wearing a nebris and holding a pedum behind his neck. Unique is the cuirassed torso on the reverse, which is likely unparalleled on supports (for the type of cuirass, see the example on a relief in the Centrale Montemartini, fig. 51 in R. d’Amato and A.E. Negin, Decorated Roman Armour). For a similar example preserving a bust of a satyr, see no. XXV, 8 in Guiluiano, op. cit.
The Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) ranked among the late 19th and early 20th century’s foremost dealers of Renaissance paintings and sculptures. Bardini was well connected with the major American collectors of his day, including Robert Lehman and Isabella Stewart Gardiner, and many important works with Bardini provenance are now dispersed throughout museums worldwide. While ancient art was not Bardini’s primary commercial focus, he certainly held a personal interest in the subject: a 1902 Christie’s London auction of a portion of his collection featured a few outstanding examples of Roman sculpture. His home, located in Florence’s Oltrarno quarter, included the deconsecrated church and convent of San Gregorio della Pace; today the home, along with the collection he lived with, stands as the Museo Bardini.