BC/AD Sculpture Ancient to Modern
BC/AD Sculpture Ancient to Modern
Property from a Belgian Private Collection
Lot Closed
July 9, 01:37 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Belgian Private Collection
A ROMAN FRAGMENTARY MARBLE GROUP OF EROS EMBRACING THE LEG OF A GOD, CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.
laughing and turning his head up and sharply to his left; a channel carved across the knee and with remains of lead, for attachment of a now missing iron clamp.
Height: 47 cm.
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Stéphane Dervillé (1870-1924), Domaine d’Ombreval, Domont, Val-d’Oise
Mme de Barral, Domaine d’Ombreval, by 1981
auction on the premises, Statues du Parc d’Ombreval. Ancienne Collection Stephane Dervillé (1870-1924), October 4th, 1997
Galerie Ratton-Ladrière, Paris
Galerie Chenel, Rue du Bac, acquired from the above
acquired by the present owner from the above in 2000
For another example of a figure of Eros grabbing a god’s leg see the Ares Ludovisi: http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/objekt/16695
Stephane Dervillé owned and operated several marble quarries in France, Belgium, Tunisia, and Italy (especially in Carrara), where he had a second home. In Rome, he acquired large quantities of marble sculpture fragments to decorate his manor house in France, the Domaine d’Ombreval, in the suburbs of Paris. Starting in 1899, his position as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Paris-Lyon-Marseille (P.L.M) railway company greatly facilitated the logistics of shipping his objects from Italy to France.
The fragments were built into or set against the façades of the Dombreval house, and the statues dispersed in the gardens. Presumably, the interior of the building contained pieces of ancient sculpture as well. These are not documented, as opposed to the exterior sculptures of which a full photographic coverage was produced by the French Ministry of Culture in 1981 (http://archives.valdoise.fr/ark:/18127/586098.663446/daogrp/0#id:1302942485?gallery=true¢er=888.156,-1952.664&zoom=6&rotation=0.000&brightness=100.00&contrast=100.00).
Dervillé’s pièce maîtresse was an over-lifesized draped figure of Aphrodite, which stood in the middle of an open meadow and which the Louvre acquired from Bernard Steinitz in Paris in 1996 (A. Pasquier, “Une grande Aphrodite au Musée du Louvre”, Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot, Vol. 82, 2003, p. 99ff.; https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/aphrodite-doria-pamphili-style).