A Marble Bust of the Eros of Centocelle, Roman Imperial, Hadrianic or Antonine, circa A.D. 120-180

after a Greek sculpture of the 4th century B.C., perhaps by Praxiteles, gazing down and to his right, the chest emerging from an oval socle and acanthus leafage, the deeply and freely drilled hair tied in a knot above the forehead and falling in long wavy curls on to the shoulders.

James Hugh Smith Barry (1746-1801), Marbury Hall, Northwich, Cheshire
by descent to Lord Barrymore, Marbury Hall (Sotheby's, London, July 29th, 1946, no. 161)
Sotheby's, New York, November 24th, 1986, no. 94, illus.
Galerie Simone de Monbrison, Paris

Cornelius Vermeule, "Notes on a New Edition of Michaelis: Ancient Marbles in Great Britain," American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 59/2, 1955, p. 142

as shown, break at neck was cleaned before re-joining, chin, nose, half of top-knot on proper right side, and back of base and bust are restored in marble (probably in the 18th Century); proper left eyebrow area mostly restored in plaster, lips abraded
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For other Roman versions of the Eros of Centocelle see P. Zanker, Klassizistische Statuen. Studien zur Veränderung des Kunstgeschmacks in der römischen Kaiserzeit, Mainz am Rhein, 1974, pp. 108-109, LIMC, vol. III, 1986, p. 862, no. 79, and A. Corso, The Art of Praxiteles, Rome, 2004, note 446. The most famous, eponymous example is the torso and head found by Gavin Hamilton at Centocelle on the Via Labicana, and now in the Museo Pio Clementino, Galleria delle statue, inv. no. 769 (Rizzo, Prassitele, pls. XXXII-XXXIII, G. Spinola, Il Museo Pio Clementino, vol. II, Rome, 1999, p. 63, no. 85, and A. Pasquier and J.-L. Martinez, Praxitèle, Paris, 2007, no. 94).

On the colorful character of James Smith Barry see G. Vaughan, "James Smith Barry as a Collector of Antiquities," Apollo, vol. 126, 1987, pp. 4-11, J. Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800 , 1997,  p. 56f., and J. Scott, The Pleasures of Antiquity: British Collectors of Greece and Rome, New Haven, 2003, pp. 143-147.

On his visit to Marbury Hall in 1873 the German scholar Adolf Michaelis understandably missed the present sculpture. He complains that "the statues and busts are very unfavourably disposed in the dark Sculpture Gallery, which is more like a cellar... others are secluded in other rooms, to which I had no access" (A. Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, Cambridge, 1882, p. 501). In his 1814 Catalogue of Paintings, Statues, Busts, etc., James Dallaway enumerates nineteen busts at Marbury Hall, of which Michaelis briefly mentions only eleven, including six emperors, a portrait of a man, a Greek philosopher, an empress, and a satyr (Michaelis, Op. cit., p. 511).