THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
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Provenance
Cesnola collection; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Literature
L. P. di Cesnola, Atlas, I, part 2, pl. 117, no. 850, described as follows: "...Found in the same locality as the preceding."(From the ruins of a temple at Pyla).

During his eleven years on Cyprus as United States Consul, Luigi Palma di Cesnola explored and identified the sites of sixteen ancient cities, excavated fifteen temples, 65 necropoli, 60,932 tombs and collected 35,573 objects.

Cesnola offered his first collection to the newly founded Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1873. In 1876 the Metropolitan Museum acquired the second collection of antiquities unearthed on Cyprus by the "indefatigable and accomplished explorer" General Cesnola, who came over in 1877 as he has done four years previously, to supervise the unpacking, cataloguing and placement of some ten thousand new objects. Cesnola's collection formed the solid basis of the Metropolitan Museum during these years and in 1877 he was appointed Secretary and Trustee of the Museum. In 1879, as a result of his extensive practical experience, push and enterprise, General Cesnola was voted by the Trustees to take up appointment as the Metropolitan Museum's first paid director, a position which he held and utterly devoted himself to for 27 years until his death in 1904. It was decided by the Museum in 1928 to de-accession some of the surplus Cypriot material and an auction was therefore held which raised $120,000

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