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A Roman antefix
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A Roman antefix
1st century AD
Imperial
Imperial
Pentelic marble
Height: 30cm
Width: 23cm
Thickness: 24cm
Width: 23cm
Thickness: 24cm
Museum number: M558
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 120
On display: Colonnade - central aisle
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house.
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Curatorial note
The carved decoration consists of a standard acanthus-leaf cup from which rises a seven-leafed palmette of a honeysuckle design.
Three similar antefixae are displayed in the Museo Chiaramonti in the Vatican and are thought to come from the same building. The details of design and workmanship of this piece are quite close to these, and the dimensions not greatly different.1 The motive had, of course, wide popularity in architectural decoration in all materials, as demonstrated by the examples in local stone discovered at Laumes, Auxois which are in the Samur Museum2, and which testify to the use of these standard forms in the non-Greek provinces.
1 See W. Amelung, Die Skulpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin, vol I (1903), pp. 627 - 629, nos. 481, 485, and 487.
2 E. Esperandieu, Recueil général des bas-reliefs de la Gaule romaine, Paris, 1907, III, pp. 279-280.
Three similar antefixae are displayed in the Museo Chiaramonti in the Vatican and are thought to come from the same building. The details of design and workmanship of this piece are quite close to these, and the dimensions not greatly different.1 The motive had, of course, wide popularity in architectural decoration in all materials, as demonstrated by the examples in local stone discovered at Laumes, Auxois which are in the Samur Museum2, and which testify to the use of these standard forms in the non-Greek provinces.
1 See W. Amelung, Die Skulpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin, vol I (1903), pp. 627 - 629, nos. 481, 485, and 487.
2 E. Esperandieu, Recueil général des bas-reliefs de la Gaule romaine, Paris, 1907, III, pp. 279-280.
Provenance
Rome; collected by Charles Heathcote Tatham for the architect Henry Holland during the 1790s. See Cornelius Vermeule, unpublished Catalogue of the Antiquities at Sir John Soane's Museum, Introduction, transcription of Tatham letters, List 2, nos. 59-63.
Literature
Tatham: Drawings, 2.
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