A Roman marble sarcophagus fragment. Early 3rd Century A.D.

From the corner of a sarchophagus, carved in high relief on one side with a nude satyr, facing right, with pointed ears and deeply drilled locks, a goat-skin falling in folds over his left shoulder, bending down and pouring wine from a bucket, his left foot on a wine skin, with a diminutive Eros on the right, looking up into the bucket and clasping the rim with his left hand, the remains of a hand in the upper right corner, holding a theatre mask aloft; the left side carved in low relief with a horned lion-griffin in profile striding to the right, 22in (55.9cm) high. Estimate: £30,000 - 40,000

Provenance: Formerly the property of a European collector.

Published: Christie's New York, Antiquities, 9 December 1999, lot 329

Literature: For a sarcophagus with Dionysiac subject-matter dating to the same period, cf. The J.Paul Getty Museum, Roman Funerary Sculpture, Catalogue of the Collections, (Malibu, 1988) no.13, p.36.

Bonhams. Antiquities, 29 Apr 2009. New Bond Street www.bonhams.com (Copyright © 2002-2009 Bonhams 1793 Ltd., Images and Text All Rights Reserved)