LATE ARCHAIC TO EARLY CLASSICAL PERIOD, CIRCA 500-450 B.C.

Details

A GREEK BRONZE ACHELOOS
LATE ARCHAIC TO EARLY CLASSICAL PERIOD, CIRCA 500-450 B.C.
3 1/8 in. (7.9 cm.) long

Provenance

Antiquities, Sotheby’s, London, 13-14 December 1982, lot 241.
Private Collection, U.S.
with Robin Symes, London.
with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, acquired from the above, 1988.
John Kluge (1914-2010), Charlottesville, acquired from the above, 1988.
The Morven Collection of Ancient Art, Christie's, New York, 8 June 2004, lot 396.
with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, acquired from the above (Art of the Ancient World, vol. XVI, 2005, no. 29).

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, p. 15, no. 88-87.
J.J. Herrmann, "From Olympus to the Underworld, Ancient Bronzes from the John W. Kluge Collection," Minerva, vol. 7, no. 2, 1996, p. 39, fig. 1.
J.M. Padgett, ed., The Centaur's Smile: The Human Animal in Early Greek Art, Princeton, 2003, p. 335, n. 4.

Exhibited

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, From Olympus to the Underworld, Ancient Bronzes from the John W. Kluge Collection, 26 March-23 June 1996.

Conditions of sale

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Hannah Fox Solomon Head of Department, Specialist

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Lot Essay

This figure represents Acheloos, the longest river in Greece, personified here as a bull with the head of a bearded man. As M. Bennett notes (pp. 333-334 in M. Padgett, ed., op. cit.), Acheloos is not a common subject in bronze and that the “personification of rivers as man-headed bulls is an Archaic tradition for which Near Eastern prototypes have been suggested. Acheloos is commonly represented this way in Greek art, becoming the quintessential Greek river god.” For a similar figure thought to be from South Italy, see no. 92 in Padgett, ed., op. cit.

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