LATE 19TH CENTURY

The model for the present lot is the famous marble boat placed in the gardens of the Villa Mattei, Rome, by Cardinal Giovanni de'Medici in the late 17th century. The Navicella, of travertine marble, and almost eight feet long, was discovered near the Villa Celimontana in the early 16th century and may originally have been an ex voto offering for a safe voyage.
The moneris slave ship is carved with the iugum slave yoke, symbolic of the conquered nations on tablets behind the boar-headed rostrum prow. An engraving of a related model was illustrated by G.B. Piranesi Vasi, Candelabri Cippi, Sarcophagi, 1778, F714.