CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Preserved is the upper right corner of a relief framed within cyma reversa and a plain outer molding. To the right stands a nude Apollo holding a lyre. His head is angled slightly downward and to his right towards his son Asclepius, who is depicted with his upper torso bare, his hands lowered to the drapery bunched on his hips. On his head he wears a thick, rolled diadem, the corona tortilis, above his wavy, center-parted hair (for the type, compare the head in Rome, no. 73 in A. Giuliano, ed., Museo Nazionale Romano, Le Sculture, vol I,1). Further to the left is the head of another deity, probably Mercury, with characteristic curly hair and the remains of a chlamys on the shoulders. The relief was likely once part of a larger composition, perhaps from an altar, depicting the Olympians. For related compositions, see for example a Roman marble circular altar, circa 1st century A.D., the Farnese Puteal in Naples (A. Ruesch, Guida illustrate del Museum nazionale di Napoli, no. 289), and an earlier Hellenistic relief from Histria, Romania.