A Monumental Marble ("Bigio Morato") Right Arm, Roman Imperial, 2nd Century A.D.

from a twice-lifesize statue of a god or hero, with powerful musculature and carefully shown details, the base of the arm carved flat and beveled for insertion.

Abram Epstein, New York
Robert Miller Gallery, New York, 1987

note missing fingers, repaired from several fragments with small areas of restoration along the breaklines, nicks adn scratches overall, surface waxed, dowel hole and metal sleeve through base of arms for vertical mounting
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This arm may have ben part of a cult-statue of Zeus-Sarapis based on the lost early 3rd Century B.C. original by Bryaxis in the Serapeum at Alexandria, where the god was shown enthroned, holding a staff in his raised left hand and resting the fingers of his right hand on the head of Cerberus (see Stewart, Greek Sculpture, fig. 632, for a small-scale Roman replica). For statues and busts of Sarapis in black stones, the use of which seems to go back to the original statue (Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, 4.43, in Stewart, Greek Sculpture, pp. 300-301) and could refer to the god's association with the Underworld, see W. Hornbostel, Sarapis. Studien zur Überlieferungsgeschichte, den Erscheinungsformen und Wandlungen der Gestalt eines Gottes, Leiden, 1973, p. 98, note 5. For a statue of Sarapis from Kôm Ombo in Egypt, carved entirely in black stone, and a white marble example from Alexandria with mortise under the draped right shoulder, see K. Wessel, ed., Christentum am Nil, Recklinghausen, 1964, figs. 49 and 50, respectively.