A Roman Marble Figure of the Young Dionysos, Roman Imperial, circa 2nd Century A.D.

standing on an oblong base with the weight on his right leg, his left foot resting on the back of a recumbent pantheress looking up at him, and wearing sandals and himation covering the lower part of his body and wrapped over his extended left forearm, the head and arms once restored in marble.

Gioacchino Ferroni (Jandolo et Tavazzi – Galerie Sangiorgi, Rome, Catalogue de la vente après décès de Mr. Joachim Ferroni, April 14th-22nd, 1909, no. 278, pl. LIV)
Galerie Helbing, Munich, Griechische Ausgrabungen, June 27th-28th, 1910, no. 519, pl. 12
Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 13th, 1911, pl. 3
Georges Joseph Demotte (1877-1923), Paris, 1919
Dr. Bres, Villa Fontvieille, Grasse, prior to 1953
French private collection, Paris, by descent
by descent to the present owner

Salomon Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, vol. IV, 2 éd., Paris, 1913, p. 63, no. 6
Salomon Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, vol. V, Paris, 1924, p. 45, no. 7 and p. 46, no. 8

The present figure, with its alien or restored head still present, was offered at auction in Rome in 1909 in the sale of the inventory of Gioacchino Ferroni, a well-known art dealer who had moved from Florence to Rome and opened a gallery on the via di Porte Pinciana (see A. Jandolo, Le memorie di un antiquario, Milan, 1938, p. 99). He was the brother-in-law of Stefano Bardini, the Florentine art dealer whose name is more widely remembered today. The statue of Dionysos went through two more auctions within the next two years, one in Munich and one in Paris, before it was acquired by Belgian-born art dealer Georges Joseph Demotte, who removed the alien or restored head before offering the sculpture for sale at his Paris gallery.