Antiques Trade Gazette 15

Left: this Roman marble of a youthful faun with a small panther led Christie’s South Kensington’s sale on £480,000.

Left: this rare bronze shabti from the New Kingdom sold for £46,000 at Christie’s South Kensington.

£105,000.

Also demonstrating how much values for good marbles have increased in a relatively short space was the day’s second highest priced lot, a c.1st century AD marble torso of Aphrodite that had sold for $80,000 at Sotheby’s in 2002 and came in here at £185,000. The piece had undergone cleaning in the interim, but equally notable, perhaps, it had an old provenance, to a 19th century Swiss collection. All three lots were secured by private European buyers.

The one sculptural disappointment was a Hellenistic Greek marble head of a goddess which proved too bullish at its £120,000-150,000 guide. With a large Hellenistic silver-gilt bowl with Homeric incised decoration that also proved too expensive at £400,000-600,000 and was bought in at £340,000, this was the sale’s main failure, and the main reason the selling rate kept to a slightly lower 77 per cent in money terms.

A piece of Hellenistic metalware was Bonhams’ main disappointment too. A c.4th-3rd century BC gold wreath formed as sprays of oak leaves failed to match expectations of £100,000- 120,000.

“Christie’s had plenty of Attic pottery, too, including another classic amphora matching those at Bonhams for style and date, but their core collection

complemented rather than duplicated, being later and more provincial”

their rare type, their unusual decoration or fine condition. There was also a selection of similar Attic pieces from other sources.

Christie’s had plenty of Attic pottery, too, including another classic amphora matching those at Bonhams for style and date, but their core collection complemented rather than duplicated, being later and more provincial. They were offering 58 lots of South Italian red figure pottery dating from the 4th century BC, collected by Gil and Myrna Goldfine since 1971. More rustic than the classic Attic pieces, this has it own charm, with decoration that offers glimpses of everyday life of the time.

The Goldfine collection made a virtue of featuring multiple examples of various

type (it had no fewer than 11 different fish plates, vigorously painted with a wide variety of piscine specimens). Christie’s biggest money spinners,

however, were their Roman marbles: portrait busts, a torso of Aphrodite and a statue of a youthful satyr, which gave them four of their five highest prices. Topping the bill was a 3ft 10in (1.2m)

high group of a youthful satyr with a panther dated to the late 1st/mid 2nd century BC. This was formerly in the collection of the author Roger Peyrefitte in Paris and had been acquired before the 1970s. Apart from the obvious charm of this work, which is a softer more youthful rendition of a 4th century BC original by Praxiteles, this had the bonus of original condition, being “all Roman”, said Ms Aitken, rather than having the Renaissance replacement elements that so often accompany Classical sculpture, and only minor areas of restoration. The £400,000-600,000 estimate was no slouch and took these attractions into consideration, but it duly lived up to expectations at a mid-estimate £480,000. The same quality and originality were attractions of a 15in (38cm) Trajanic era bust of a young boy with thick wavy hair and well-defined features. This had a provenance traceable back to the 1950s when it was in a British collection. It was last under the hammer nine years ago in Sotheby’s New York rooms, where it made $50,000. This time around it realised

Bonhams’ highest priced Roman sculpture was a 101/2

in (27cm) high, 1st

century AD head of Menander at a low- estimate £60,000. But they also had a Roman marble which more than lived up to its billing as the catalogue cover lot. This was a finely carved 17in (43cm) high conical cinerary urn worked from figured breccia marble with a strigilated body and bucranie, swags and sacrificial implements to the neck, provenanced to a private English collection since the 1950s. An “unusual and really tactile piece”, according to Madeleine Perridge, a two- way bidding battle took it to a double- estimate £50,000.

But it was their Attic figure vases that led the field by a wide margin. Topping the list were two pieces with decoration attributed to the so-called Antimenes painter and his workshop dated to c.510BC. From the core English collection came

in (24.4cm) high stamnos from the Antimenes workshop decorated in so- called six technique (an early form of red figure painting with incised decoration). The scheme relayed the myth of Perseus and the Minotaur with a youthful, vigorously rendered Perseus, pursuing a fleeing minotaur and Ariadne with arms outstretched, each figure named in Greek and with a dedication to the shoulder. This particular stamnos was rare for having no handles and for the fact that

a 91/2

continued on page 16

in (19cm) diameter example shown top, painted with a torpedo and two bream, up to £62,000 for the 8in (20cm) diameter example above centre. It was attributed to the painter of Boston282 and decorated with a striped perch, a torpedo and a cuttlefish. The 81

A feature of last month’s antiquities sales were these 4th century South Italian fish plates, each painted in lively style with a variety of specimens set around a central depression for garum, or strongly flavoured fish sauce, that was a feature of Classical Mediterranean cuisine. The Goldfine collection offered at Christie’s contained no fewer than 11 specimens made in Campania, Apulia and other locations. Prices ranged from a low of £1900 for the 71

/2

in (21cm) plate shown above, painted with a perch, a bream and an octopus, was one of two fish plates offered in Bonhams’ sale, where it realised £7000.

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