Lot 62
  • 62

A Marble Figure of a Girl, Roman Imperial, circa 1st Century A.D.

Estimate
50,000 - 80,000 USD
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Description

  • A Marble Figure of a Girl
  • Height 38 in. 96.5 cm.
standing on a fragmentary oval base with her weight on the left leg, her right arm by her side and her left forearm raised, and wearing a long sleeveless chiton fastened on the shoulder and enveloping himation leaving the right shoulder bare, wrapped around the right arm, and falling in long folds from her left forearm, the neck hollowed out for insertion of a separately-carved head; the end of the base, right foot, left hand, and head formerly restored.

Provenance

Pope Urban VIII (Cardinal Maffeo Barberini), reigned 1623-1644, Palazzo Barberini alle Quattro Fontane, Rome
Antonio Barberini (1607-1671), Palazzo Barberini, Rome [1644 Inventory, no. 762]
Palazzo Barberini, Rome, until the late 19th/early 20th Century
Belgian private collection, before 1979
Ariadne Galleries, New York, early 1980s

Literature

Friedrich Matz and Franz von Dühn, Antike Bildwerke in Rom mit ausschluss der grösseren Sammlungen, vol. I, Leipzig, 1881, p. 445, no. 1553
Georg Lippold, Paul Arndt, and Walter Amelung, Photographische Einzelaufnahmen antiker Sculpturen. Serien zur Vorbereitung eines Corpus Statuarum, Serie X, Munich, 1925, p. 63, no. 2906, illus.
Salomon Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, vol. VI, Paris, 1930, p. 126, no. 5
Rudolf Horn, Stehende weibliche Gewandstatuen in der hellenistischen Plastik, Munich, 1931, p. 45, n. 2
M. Aronberg Lavin, Seventeenth Century Barberini Documents and Inventories, New York, 1970, pp. 185 (no. 762) and 714
Andreas Linfert, Kunstzentren hellenistischer Zeit. Studien an weibliche Gewandfiguren, Wiesbaden, 1976, p. 54, n. 151c
Arachne. Datenbank und kulturelle Archive des Forschungsarchiv für Antike Plastik Köln und des Deutsches Archäologisches Instituts, no. 28685

Catalogue Note

The earliest inventory of the contents of the Barberini Palace in Rome was drawn up in 1644 upon the death of Urban VIII, and very likely records the present statue under no. 762 as "Una statue di donna vestita, con il braccio destro involtato a dentro un panno, sopra il sinistro, che ancora e involtato in un panno, 5 1/ 2 alta p.mi."

There are only two other known free-standing marble sculptures of this type, one in Florence (Reinach, op. cit, vol. I, p. 458, no. 1, and Horn, op. cit, pl. 14,2) and one in the Vatican (Amelung, Die sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin, 1936, vol. 1, 26, 76; Reinach, op. cit, vol. III, p. 284, no.1). The Roman versions are likely to be based on a Hellenistic prototype representing a youthful Helen accompanied by Peitho, which Andreas Linfert recognized in a group found at Torbali near Ephesos (Linfert, op. cit., pp. 52-53, figs. 76-81). For a related late 3rd Century B.C. terracotta figurine from Tanagra see L. Burn and R.A. Higgins, Catalogue of Greek Terracottas in the British Museum, vol. III, London, 2001, no. 1088, pl. 16.