Antiques Trade Gazette 69
classical success
Above: a Greek terracotta zoomachia – $220,000 (£148,650) at Christie’s.
2700 years on – Steppes to a jewellery hit in Paris
“A solid provenance with a museum predigree always helps but can be even more important in this market”
Right: a Roman marble sculpture of a comedy actor, which topped Christie’s antiquities sale in New York on June 8, selling at $770,000 (£520,270).
Below: a carved Greek wing from c.5th century BC – $200,000 (£135,135) at Sotheby’s New York.
Right: an Apulian red-figure calyx krater from the Jan Mitchell collection – $280,000 (£189,190) at the same Sotheby’s antiquities sale.
acquisition fund. The choice for the catalogue
cover, it showed a scene of the goddess Hathor in the form of a cow with an earlier Pharaoh, Neb-hepet-Re Mentu-hotep, being
venerated. Dating from the New Kingdom
(c.1300-1200BC), the 19in (48cm) piece had been removed from a shrine in the hills of Western Thebes in 1906 and ended up in the museum’s collection in 1956. Estimated at $80,000- 120,000, it sold to a US private
buyer at $650,000 (£439,189). A surprise inclusion in the top
ten was a small Greek terracotta zoomachia depicting a lion savaging
a bull. Made in Sicily during the Archaic period (c.550-500BC), the 13¾in (35cm) piece had been acquired in
Europe during the 1960s for the Wilson estate in Arizona. Estimated at $10,000-15,000, it sold
(£4.95m), with 71% sold by lot and value and private buyers from Europe and the US dominating the top ten lots. The highest-valued item on the day
was a Roman marble sculpture of an actor wearing the mask known as the Old Man of Comedy. In exceptional condition, it is one of
only four complete standing figures of this type known to exist today, the others are in the Vatican Museum and the Villa Albani in Rome.
Christie’s example, measuring 2ft
4in (73cm) high, had been in a South American private collection since 1961. Estimated at $150,000-250,000,
it topped the sale with a $770,000 (£520,270) bid from a North American private buyer. The highest price achieved for an
Egyptian work of art across both sales was a painted votive linen consigned to Christie’s by the Heckscher Museum in Huntington New York to benefit its art
for substantially more to a US private buyer at $220,000 (£148,648). Like Sotheby’s, however, Christie’s also
suffered some leading failures which, again, included the potential star of the day – a c.350-300BC Greek bronze mirror with a scene of Paris, Helen and Eros estimated at $600,000-900,000. Elsewhere, a rare Judean desert
limestone mask from the Neolithic period dated c.7th century BC, which Christie’s had estimated at $400,000-600,000, also failed to excite bidders.
THE outstanding item in the 300-lot antiquities sale at Pierre Bergé & Associés (25/17.9% buyer’s premium) on June 1 was the 2in (5cm) wide, gold running-stag dress ornament, above, from the Patti Birch collection. Dated to the 7th-6th century BC, it is very
similar in form to another excavated in 1897 and now in The Hermitage. The fleeing deer motif is characteristic of
the Scythians and other peoples. It sold at €500,000 (£416,665). Another great rarity in this wide-ranging
sale was a very well-preserved ancient Egyptian pleated linen tunic dated to the 6th- 11th Dynasties, which sold below estimate at €220,000 (£183,335). On May 30 the 265-lot sale of antiquities from two private collections held by Binoche
et Giquello (26% buyer’s premium) produced a major surprise in the form of an early Dynastic Period cylinder vase, right, inscribed in hieroglyphs with the name of King Narmer. The 8in (20cm)
high diorite vessel, dating from c.3150BC, was broken at the top and a large part of the rim was missing but it retained the all-important scratched inscription of a catfish over a chisel surmounted by a falcon, which spelled out the name of the first Pharaoh of unified Egypt. Anyone hoping to buy it at the published
estimate of €15,000-20,000 had to think again as bidding rose to €420,000 (£350,000). Also going way over estimate was a 7in
(18cm) high, Fourth Dynasty ointment jar of flared cylindrical form with a spreading foot. Once again there were considerable losses
but the scratched inscription was still fresh and clear. In this case the hieroglyphs included the name of Djedefre, a Pharaoh whose effigy in the form of a sphinx head excavated at Abu Rawash is one of the treasures of the Louvre. Bidding on this reached €280,000 (£233,335). Mark Bridge
£1 = €1.20
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