S otheby’s dedicated sale of Ancient Sculpture & Works of Art includes a diverse selection of objects from the classical world, spanning from Roman glass to Egyptian sculpture to Greek pottery to classical marbles.
The sale is led by an exceptional marble torso of Narcissus, along with an Egyptian Wood Mummy Mask dating to the Third Intermediate Period and an Attic Red-Figured Kylix attributed to the painter Makron. It also features a diverse grouping of ancient miniature objects ranging from Roman glass from the Kofler-Truinger collection to Egyptian alabaster vessels.
The belief in the afterlife was an essential tenet of ancient Egyptian religion. As such, the art-making tradition centered around burial rites including creating richly decorated visages of the deceased. This sale includes numerous examples of Egyptian funerary portraiture, ranging from the highly stylized to a hauntingly lifelike encaustic on wood portrait of a young man.
This sale features a diverse selection of diminutive ancient objects, ranging from Predynastic Alabaster vessels to mould-blown Roman glass.
Led by a wonderfully detailed Attic Red-Figured Kylix attributed to the painter Makron, this sale includes a diverse selection of pottery from mainland Greece and southern Italy.
Aphrodite, the Classical goddess of love and beauty and the embodiment of female beauty is represented in multiple lots of in this sale.
When he passed away last year at age 95, the celebrated art historian and Pablo Picasso biographer Sir John Richardson left behind a lifetime’s worth of art and objects. While Richardson acquired many of the works travels, many others were treasured gifts from the countless artists he called friends.
Sotheby’s is honored to present Richardson’s storied collection, unparalleled in its style, taste and significance, which counts among its many highlights important works from this alabaster head to contemporary artworks by Lucian Freud and Ugo Rondinone. The alabaster head is striking amongst Richardson’s possessions as being the earliest echo of Picasso’s favored style of geometric abstraction of the human form in Richardson’s collection.
