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Small statue: a nymph or related figure, probably from a garden fountain
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Small statue: a nymph or related figure, probably from a garden fountain
Grey Greek island marble
Height: 52cm
Museum number: M403
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 372
On display: Basement West Corridor
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
This female figure is clad in a full-length peplos with long, high-girt overfold and a heavy himation wrapped about the left wrist, brought around the back, and falling in heavy folds across the right thigh and down to the ground between the legs. She is represented in the act of striding rapidly forward, weight shifting from the left to the advanced right foot.
The figure, probably appearing here as a garden nymph or some similar secondary Roman decorative work, is related to an Artemis type probably created at Rhodes in the second half of the Second Century B.C. but with antecedents in the circle of the well known Praxiteles over a hundred years previous (L. Laurenzi, in Röm. Mitt., 54, 1939, pp.57ff., pl.16). The origins of the Soane figure certainly lie in this earlier period, and the type suggests initiation as a wingless Nike or similar goddess although the movement would not be unsuited to Artemis herself.
The figure, probably appearing here as a garden nymph or some similar secondary Roman decorative work, is related to an Artemis type probably created at Rhodes in the second half of the Second Century B.C. but with antecedents in the circle of the well known Praxiteles over a hundred years previous (L. Laurenzi, in Röm. Mitt., 54, 1939, pp.57ff., pl.16). The origins of the Soane figure certainly lie in this earlier period, and the type suggests initiation as a wingless Nike or similar goddess although the movement would not be unsuited to Artemis herself.
Provenance
Unrecorded
Exhibition history
The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009
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