CIRCA MID TO LATE 1ST CENTURY A.D.

In a letter to a previous owner, the King's College archaeologist G.B. Waywell (1944-2016) considered this figure to belong to a series of funerary sculptures depicting youths with the attributes of various deities, including Dionysus, as suggested here by the bunch of grapes held in his left hand. The drapery of this paunchy figure is paralleled by a more fragmentary statue in the Museo Chiaramonti, pl. 328 in B. Andreae Bildkatalog der Skulpturen des Vatikanischen Museums, Bd. 1. Also related is the statue of a youth with the attributes of Hermes in Erbach (pl. 2 in K. Fittschen, Katalog der antiken Skulpturen in Schloss Erbach).