Royal-Athena Galleries, Art of the Ancient World 2016 - Vol. XXVII

16 IMPORTANT ROMAN MARBLE STATUE OF A KORE Carved of pavonacetto (red, purple, and white brecciated marble) in archaizing style. She stands rigidly upright, dressed in a peplos draped symmetrically over her body, her hands holding the sides of the garment at her hips. Her head is carved from giallo antico (a yellowish marble) and her wavy hair, crowned with a diadem, is parted in the center falling in two curls on either side of her oval face. Her eyes were once inlaid. The pavonacetto, rarely used for sculpture, is from a quarry in Dokimeion, Phrygia; the giallo antico comes from North Africa, either in Numidia or Libya.

1st Century AD. H. 27 1/2 in. (69 cm.)

Ex collection of W. Kemp, ca. 1721; George Kemp, Baron Rochdale (1866-1945), thence by descent to John Durival Kemp, 1st Viscount Rochdale, Langholm, England (1906-1993); private collection, Greensboro, North Carolina, acquired from Royal-Athena in July 1999.

Cf. E. Equini Schneider, Catalogo di Sculture Romane del Museo Nazionale, “G. A. Sanna, di Sassari e del commune di Porto Torres�, 1979, p. 25, no. 10.

This is a work not only of exceptional rarity, but also one of exquisite beauty, having been created to serve in a luxurious private home as a trapezophoros, a support for an elaborate table composed of a variety of different colored marbles. To our knowledge, only two other examples of this type have survived, both headless and now in the collections of the Museo Nazionale of Italy. This is the only example in private hands.

16