A ROMAN MARBLE TELAMON - CIRCA 1ST CENTURY B.C.-1ST CENTURY A.D.

In the form of a young satyr once shouldering an architrave, the weight cushioned by a panther skin draped over a cylindrical pillar, the muscular figure standing with his right hand originally on his hip, the left arm raised to steady his burden, his tail splayed to either side of the pillar, his neck bent forward with his head turned to his right, his smiling face with parted lips revealing teeth, his lidded eyes unarticulated, sporting a short chin beard, a wispy mustache, and sideburns, his thick wavy locks swept up from his forehead, his pointed ears protruding behind, with small budding horns at the hairline. 30 3/8 in. (77.1 cm.) high. Estimate: $400,000 - $600,000

THE PROPERTY OF AMBASSADOR EDWARD ELLIOT ELSON

Provenance: Anonymous sale; Sotheby's New York, 23 June 1989, lot 180.

Lot Notes: This telamon likely once served as an architectural embellishment for a Roman theater. The late Hellenistic theater at Segesta of circa 100 B.C. once had engaged figures of Pan on the front face of the paraskenion. These are similar to two statues of Pan, now in the Capitoline Museum, that are thought to have come from the theater built by Pompey in Rome in 55 B.C. (fig. 603 and 604a-b in Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater). Kneeling figures of silenoi were employed during the Neronian modernization of the theater of Dionysos Eleuthereus in Athens, and there are copies of these in the Louvre and Capitoline Museums (Bieber, op. cit., fig. 718, 753 and 754). A colossal standing figure of a satyr in this same pose was also part of the Neronian phase of the theater of Dionysos in Athens (Bieber, op. cit., fig. 755).

A youthful satyr nearly identical to the present example, his head antithetically positioned, is in the Smith College Museum, no. 127 in Vermeule, Greek and Roman Sculpture in America, and another is in Copenhagen, nos. 497-498 in Poulsen, Catalogue of Ancient Sculpture in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek

Christie's. ANTIQUITIES.  4 June 2008