A Greek marble figure of a young girl holding a bird
Circa 4th-3rd Century B.C.
From a grave stele, with the head and body separately-carved, both in the round, the girl with her head downcast and slightly turned to the left, wearing a peplos with long apoptygma (overfold), the sleeve falling over her right shoulder, holding a bird in her hands, the reverse with a cut-out section, 35in (89cm) high, wooden base 19¾in (50cm) high, mounted
Circa 4th-3rd Century B.C.
From a grave stele, with the head and body separately-carved, both in the round, the girl with her head downcast and slightly turned to the left, wearing a peplos with long apoptygma (overfold), the sleeve falling over her right shoulder, holding a bird in her hands, the reverse with a cut-out section, 35in (89cm) high, wooden base 19¾in (50cm) high, mounted
Sold for
£54,050
inc. premium
Footnotes
- Provenance:
The Aldo Branca Collection, Ascona, Switzerland, acquired between the 1960s and 1980s.
Literature:
The image of a young girl holding a bird was popular in funerary and votive sculpture from Classical Greece. The most famous example is the 5th Century B.C. stele from Paros now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. MMA 27.45, A. Stewart, Greek Sculpture, Yale 1990, no.304. The type continues throughout the later Classical and Hellenistic periods, cf. the Attic grave stele of Demainete in the Getty Villa, inv. 75.AA.63; and the 3rd Century B.C. funerary figure of a young girl in the Fethiye Museum, Turkey: R.R.R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture, London, 1991, no.115.
As demonstrated by this lot, it was not uncommon for funerary sculpture to be carved in two separate pieces, with the head often from better quality marble and the body of a stock type. For a similar head of a young girl in the Metropolitan Museum designed for insertion into a separate body, cf. G. Richter, The Sculpture of Sculptors of the Greeks, New Haven and London, 1970, fig.482, p.123.
Category: Antiquities
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