Italian, Rome, 18th century

This intriguing head of a faun was recorded by Michaelis in 1882, who questioned whether it was ancient. Whilst evidently restored, it seems probable that the head is an 18th-century construction, designed to look like a restored antiquity. However, an ancient dating cannot be entirely ruled out.

The present marble was almost certainly acquired by Charles Kinnaird, 8th Lord Kinnaird, an important art collector and whig politician. He was highly educated, having studied at Eton, and the universities of Edinburgh, Cambridge, Glasgow and Geneva. According to Millar, 'From that time until the death of his father in 1805 he voted consistently with the Foxite whigs, and rendered valuable aid to the party in the repeated attacks made upon the Addington ministry' (op. cit.). Kinnaird was an Italophile, who was in Venice in 1805 when he learned of his father's death. He was a prolific art collector who assembled one of the great Scottish collections of antique statuary and pictures. Many of his paintings, which included works by Rubens, Titian and Poussin, had come from the collection of Philippe Égalité, duc d'Orléans.

RELATED LITERATURE

Millar, A., & Matthew, H.  Kinnaird, Charles, eighth Lord Kinnaird of Inchture (1780–1826), politician and art collector. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 14 Jun. 2022, from https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-15632.