Francesca Hickin
Head of Department
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Lot 103
A large Graeco-Roman bronze statue of Alexander the Great
28 November 2019, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street£150,000 - £200,000
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Anna Marston
Associate Specialist
A large Graeco-Roman bronze statue of Alexander the Great
Circa 1st Century B.C.-1st Century A.D.
Standing with his weight on his left leg, the right leg bent, wearing sandals and a himation draped over his proper left shoulder and arm and wound in a thick roll around his waist, the folds falling to his knees and along his proper left side, his muscular chest bared, his head gently turned to the left, his idealised face gazing into the distance with lidded, almond-shaped eyes, full, pert lips and rounded chin, his long, thick leonine hair arranged in an anastole and falling onto his neck, bound by a fillet, 42cm high
Circa 1st Century B.C.-1st Century A.D.
Standing with his weight on his left leg, the right leg bent, wearing sandals and a himation draped over his proper left shoulder and arm and wound in a thick roll around his waist, the folds falling to his knees and along his proper left side, his muscular chest bared, his head gently turned to the left, his idealised face gazing into the distance with lidded, almond-shaped eyes, full, pert lips and rounded chin, his long, thick leonine hair arranged in an anastole and falling onto his neck, bound by a fillet, 42cm high
Footnotes
Provenance:
Private collection, Argentina, ca. 1960s.
London art market.
Mr A. collection, acquired April 2010.
This important and impressive bronze captures Alexander as the heroic ideal: youthful and powerful, with a contemplative, meditative gaze. For similar portraiture, see a head of Alexander at the J. Paul Getty Museum, LA, acc. no. 73.AA.27. It has been suggested that this style of portrait, with its similarities to contemporary Athenian funerary portraits, first appeared in the decade following Alexander's death in 323 B.C. (The Search for Alexander: An Exhibition, New York, 1980, p. 101, no. 6). See also a large standing marble statue of Alexander similarly garbed in a himation, draped around his upper legs and exposing his chest, at the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, and dating to the 1st Century B.C. (Arachne database no. 7696), and a smaller bronze statuette of Alexander-Hermes, with comparable stance and drapery, published in 1903 when in the Constantin Sinadino collection (T. Schreiber, Studien über das Bildniss Alexanders des Grossen , Leipzig, 1903, p. 145-7, fig. 12).
Bronze figures of Alexander of this scale are exceedingly rare; see a bronze statue of a huntsman thought to be Alexander at the British Museum, London, acc. no. 1868,0520.65.
