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Lot Essay
The goddess is depicted standing on an integral plinth with her weight on her right leg and with the left leg slightly bent. She wears a floor-length peplos with her sandaled feet emerging from below the hem, and a mantle draped over both shoulders. The mantle falls from the right shoulder in an arc across her lower body and descends in columnar fashion below her left arm. The folds of both garments are artfully delineated in contrasting style, the peplos characterized by deep vertical flutes, the mantle by taut arcing folds that reveal the form of her body beneath. Her center-parted wavy hair is crowned with a thick circlet and covered with a veil, with wavy strands falling along her neck. Behind the circlet is a drilled mortise for insertion of a now-missing separately-made crown. Which goddess is depicted is difficult to establish due to the lack of surviving attributes, although the suggested Antinoöpolis provenance and the drilled mortice for a diminutive crown suggests a syncretistic Isis or Ceres. For a related depiction in terms of the treatment of the veiled head, see the marble figure now described as Demeter with features of Io/Isis, no. 189 in M.B. Comstock and C.C. Vermeule, Sculpture in Stone, The Greek, Etruscan and Roman Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Vincent (1886-1967) and Olga (1906-2000) Diniacopoulos were dealers, restorers and collectors whose influence reached across three continents during the mid 20th century. As N. Blumer notes (p. 12 in Finding Home: The Diniacopoulos Family and Collection), “Vincent and Olga Diniacopoulos set up multiple homes throughout their lives while also remaining on the move, travelling the world over and seeming to cross time periods to search for, assess, buy, and sell artefacts.” Vincent (born Vikentios) was an ethnic Greek who was born and raised in Constantinople. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Vincent emigrated to Cairo in the 1920s where he met Olga Nicolas, a member of the Egyptian Greek community. Together they ran an art gallery in the south of France and then later settled in Montreal in 1951, although they continued to make frequent trips back to Europe and the Middle East. This marble was photographed by Arakel Artinian (1892-1979) of the Venus Photo Studio in Cairo, likely prior to 1951. It was then purchased by Khalil Rabenou from the Diniacopouloses (operating under the name Monsieur et Madame D. Vincent) in 1958 and has remained in the family ever since.
Vincent (1886-1967) and Olga (1906-2000) Diniacopoulos were dealers, restorers and collectors whose influence reached across three continents during the mid 20th century. As N. Blumer notes (p. 12 in Finding Home: The Diniacopoulos Family and Collection), “Vincent and Olga Diniacopoulos set up multiple homes throughout their lives while also remaining on the move, travelling the world over and seeming to cross time periods to search for, assess, buy, and sell artefacts.” Vincent (born Vikentios) was an ethnic Greek who was born and raised in Constantinople. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Vincent emigrated to Cairo in the 1920s where he met Olga Nicolas, a member of the Egyptian Greek community. Together they ran an art gallery in the south of France and then later settled in Montreal in 1951, although they continued to make frequent trips back to Europe and the Middle East. This marble was photographed by Arakel Artinian (1892-1979) of the Venus Photo Studio in Cairo, likely prior to 1951. It was then purchased by Khalil Rabenou from the Diniacopouloses (operating under the name Monsieur et Madame D. Vincent) in 1958 and has remained in the family ever since.