A Roman marble group of two wrestling children. Circa 1st Century A.D.

27 avril 2009

A Roman marble group of two wrestling children. Circa 1st Century A.D.

A Roman marble group of two wrestling children. Circa 1st Century A.D.

With one child on the back of the other, wrapping his arms around his neck, and biting his ear, the other child twisting his chubby body and attempting to disengage himself, with furrowed brow and mouth agape, 15½in (39.4cm) high, the crown of the figure on top restored, the back hollowed out and drilled through in antiquity or later for use as a fountainhead, mounted. Estimate: £20,000 - 30,000

Provenance: Ex Franz von Matsch Collection, a Viennese painter and sculptor (1861-1942), Haubenbieglgasse no.3, Vienna, acquired between 1896 and 1908. Franz von Matsch once worked with Gustav Klimt and is remembered for his 'Anchor Clock' on Vienna's Hoher Markt. As a Professor at the Vienna Kungstgewerbeschule he published the University's Greek vase collection in the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. This sculpture was formerly in the collection of the Bratislava-born Viennese sculptor Viktor Oskar Tilgner (1844-1896). Tilgner worked mostly as a portraitist while also executing commissions for funerary monuments, fountains and other architectural decorations for buildings around Vienna. Two Roman Imperial female portrait heads from his estate also became part of the Franz von Matsch Collection.

Published: Hans Tietze, Die Denkmale der Stadt Wien: XI-XXI. Bezirk, Mit archäologischen Beitr: von Heinrich Sitte, (Österreichische Kunsttopographie, vol.2) Vienna, 1908, pp.421-422, figs.539-540.

Literature: This sculpture is based on a late Hellenistic prototype and recalls the Rococo trend in Hellenistic art, beginning in the 3rd Century and lasting through the Roman period. Examples of this style can be found in statues of the infant Herakles strangling snakes and a boy strangling a goose in the Capitoline Museum, Rome, cf. M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, (New York 1955), fig. 536 & 285. The biting motif was a favourite of Hellenistic artists, cf. Ariel Herrmann, 'The Biter: a Late Hellenistic Astragal Player', Studies in Classical Archaeology: A Tribute to Peter Heinrich von Blanckenhagen, (New York, 1979) p.158, pls.XLVI-XLVIII. Cf. also the Townley Collection marble sculpture of two boys fighting over a game of knucklebones in the British Museum, based on a 3rd-2nd Century B.C. original, inv. no.1756.