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Lot Essay
The pudgy child is depicted nude, striding forward on his left leg, with his arms originally lowered. His wavy locks are secured with a diadem and arranged in a top-knot above his forehead, with wisps falling along his brow.
The identification of this impressive large-scale bronze is complicated by the lack of surviving attributes. It is possibly Cupid because he is commonly depicted with a top-knot, but the lack of wings here argues against this. The Egyptian child god Harpokrates is also typically shown with such a hairstyle, but during the Roman period he is usually depicted as a slightly older child in a more static pose, with his right forefinger raised to his lips (see the bronze in Cleveland, no. 21 in A.P. Kozloff and D.G. Mitten, The Gods Delight, The Human Figure in Classical Bronze). Hercules and Bacchus — two of Jupiter's sons — are also a possibility as they were sometimes depicted as babies; see the bronze in St. Louis tentatively identified as the infant Hercules (no. 128 in D.G. Mitten and S.F. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical World) and the bronze in the Getty Villa thought to depict the infant Bacchus (no. 144 in M. True and K. Hamma, eds., A Passion for Antiquities).
It may be that the child presented here is not of mythological origin at all, and was a decorative sculpture in a villa. Perhaps he was part of a fountain, such as the bronze boy holding a dolphin from the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, or a lamp-bearer, such as the example from the House of Fabius Rufus at Pompeii (see nos. 44 and 85 in C.C. Mattusch, et al., Pompeii and the Roman Villa, Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples).
The identification of this impressive large-scale bronze is complicated by the lack of surviving attributes. It is possibly Cupid because he is commonly depicted with a top-knot, but the lack of wings here argues against this. The Egyptian child god Harpokrates is also typically shown with such a hairstyle, but during the Roman period he is usually depicted as a slightly older child in a more static pose, with his right forefinger raised to his lips (see the bronze in Cleveland, no. 21 in A.P. Kozloff and D.G. Mitten, The Gods Delight, The Human Figure in Classical Bronze). Hercules and Bacchus — two of Jupiter's sons — are also a possibility as they were sometimes depicted as babies; see the bronze in St. Louis tentatively identified as the infant Hercules (no. 128 in D.G. Mitten and S.F. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical World) and the bronze in the Getty Villa thought to depict the infant Bacchus (no. 144 in M. True and K. Hamma, eds., A Passion for Antiquities).
It may be that the child presented here is not of mythological origin at all, and was a decorative sculpture in a villa. Perhaps he was part of a fountain, such as the bronze boy holding a dolphin from the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, or a lamp-bearer, such as the example from the House of Fabius Rufus at Pompeii (see nos. 44 and 85 in C.C. Mattusch, et al., Pompeii and the Roman Villa, Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples).