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Cast of a Roman relief in the Vatican Museum showing Cupid in a biga drawn by a pair of boars towards an altar
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Cast SM SC64. Before conservation, July 2012. ©A.C. Cooper (colour) Limited
Cast of a Roman relief in the Vatican Museum showing Cupid in a biga drawn by a pair of boars towards an altar
c.1820, made
Rome
Plaster cast
Museum number: SC64
On display: Staircase - second to third floor (pre-booked tours only)
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house.
For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit
Curatorial note
Cast of a Roman original from the Villa Adriana, Tivoli, in the Vatican, Museo Pio-Clementino, Sala degli Animali (Vatican inventory no. 364), dating from the first half of the second century AD.
The cast incorporates an elaborate frame composed of taenia, cyma reversa and torus mouldings, the work of later restorers along with the right arm and wing of the cupid, part of the wheel, and the nose and right hind leg of the boar in the foreground.
This distinctive relief was also reproduced by Nathaniel Marchant in his set of plaster intaglios issued in 1792, of which there is an example in Soane's collection.
There are casts of this relief in many European collections including that of the sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen in Denmark.
The cast incorporates an elaborate frame composed of taenia, cyma reversa and torus mouldings, the work of later restorers along with the right arm and wing of the cupid, part of the wheel, and the nose and right hind leg of the boar in the foreground.
This distinctive relief was also reproduced by Nathaniel Marchant in his set of plaster intaglios issued in 1792, of which there is an example in Soane's collection.
There are casts of this relief in many European collections including that of the sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen in Denmark.
Provenance
Acquired by Soane from the architect Lewis Wyatt, 1834.
Literature
Jan Zahle, Thorvaldsen: Collector of Plaster Casts from Antiquity and the Early Modern Period, 2020, Vol. II, p.201, Thorwaldsen inventory no. L306 and Vol. III, p.233 (illustration of Thorwaldsen example).
Associated items
Soane collections online is being continually updated. If you wish to find out more or if you have any further information about this object please contact us: worksofart@soane.org.uk