Property Formerly in the Collection of Jan Mitchell
A Hellenistic Marble Votive Relief Fragment, 2nd Half of the 2nd Century B.C., with 17th Century Restorations
Auction Closed
July 3, 02:32 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
A Hellenistic Marble Votive Relief Fragment
2nd Half of the 2nd Century B.C., with 17th Century Restorations
finely carved in high relief with the figure of a bearded man reclining on a couch, holding a phiale in his raised right hand, and wearing a himation leaving his upper body bare, a tripod table before him laden with food, the couch with elaborate turned foot, thick mattress, and tasseled coverlet, the table with feline legs; the edge of the table, lower sections of the table legs, and phiale restored, the left hand and lower forearm, left knee, and nose formerly restored.
46.3 by 52.2 cm.
Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661), Paris and Rome
Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke (1656-1733), Wilton House, Wiltshire
by descent to Sidney Herbert, 16th Earl of Pembroke (1906-1969), Wilton House, Wiltshire (Christie’s, July 3rd, 1961, no. 130)
Jan Mitchell (1913-2009), New York
by descent to the present owner
Documented
1653 inventory of the Palais Mazarin in Paris: "Un bas-relief long en travers, hault de deux palmes ou environ, où l'on voit un Jupiter assis près d'une table ronde chargée de diverses viandes, tenant une tasse en main et ayant à son costé une Pallas et à l'autre une figure qui porte un plat, le tout de marbre blanc" (d'Orléans 1861)
1661 inventory of the Palais Mazarin in Paris, no. 1482 (de Cosnac 1885, Yoshida-Takeda 2004)
Published
Robert Castell, The Villas of the Ancients Illustrated, London, 1728, p. 119, illus.
Richard Cowdry, A Description of the Pictures, Statues, [...] at the Earl of Pembroke’s House at Wilton, London, 1751, p. 92
Thomas Martyn, The English Connoisseur, London, 1767, p. 120
James Kennedy, A Description of the Antiquities and Curiosities in Wilton-House, Salisbury, 1769, p. 105
George Richardson, Aedes Pembrochianae or a Critical Account of the Statues, Bustos, Relievos [...] at Wilton-House, London, 1774, p. 110
Henri Eugène Philippe Louis d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale, Inventaire de tous les meubles du Cardinal Mazarin dressé en 1653, et publié d'après l'original, conservé dans les Archives de Condé, London, 1861, p. 367, no. 123
Adolf Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, Cambridge, 1882, p. 689, no. 85
Comte de Cosnac, Les richesses du Palais Mazarin, 2nd ed., Paris, 1885, pp. 371-372, no. 1482
Patrick Michel, Mazarin, prince des collectionneurs. Les collections et l'ameublement de Jules Mazarin (1602-1661). Histoire et analyse, Paris, 1999, p. 362
Tomiko Yoshida-Takeda, Inventaire dressé en 1661 après le décès du cardinal Mazarin, Paris, 2004, p. 242, no. 1482
Peter Stewart, A Catalogue of the Sculpture Collection at Wilton House, Oxford, 2020, p. 406, no. 151
For a closely related example in the Getty Museum, probably from the same workshop, see A. Herrmann, in: M. True and K. Hamma, eds., A Passion for Antiquities. Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, exh. cat., 1994, pp. 240-242, cat. no. 123 (https://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/0892362235.html). The Getty relief (acc. no. 96.AA.167) shows a youthful male attendant standing next to a large calyx krater on the left of the banqueter and a panther seated alongside the couch; these details, together with an ivy leaf on the banqueter's temple, suggest "that the man is either Dionysos or a devotee of the god" (https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/10405H).
In the 17th century a clever sculptor restored the present fragment (a) and combined it with three other mutually unrelated ancient fragments: (b) a standing figure of Athena from an acroterion (see the following lot), (c) a striding figure of a girl carrying a dish from a sarcophagus, and (d) a griffin in profile from an unknown relief or figure, possibly a representation of Nemesis. This "marriage" allowed the restorer to create a continuous mythological scene showing a recumbent banqueting Zeus flanked by Athena standing on the left and Hebe attending to him from the right, with the end of his couch in the form of an ornamental seated griffin. The scene is preserved in a drawing published in 1728. This Olympian pasticcio passed unmolested from Cardinal Mazarin's collection to the Earl of Pembroke's in the early 18th century until its sale at auction in 1961. Probably shortly thereafter, an enterprising dealer dismantled the relief and mounted the four fragments separately. Three of them at least (a, b, and d) were sold individually to Jan Mitchell; (a) and (b) are in the present sale, (d) is now in a New York private collection, and the fate of the remaining fragment (c) remains unknown.
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