Greek Hellenistic Canosan Polychrome Female Figure

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Ancient / Ethnographic Around The World

By Artemis Gallery

Mar 12, 2020

Set Reminder 2020-03-12 10:00:00 2020-03-12 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Ancient / Ethnographic Around The World https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/ancient-ethnographic-around-the-world-4957
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• Lot Description
  Magna Graecia, Apulia, Canosan, Hellenistic Period, ca. mid-4th to early 2nd century BCE. An attractive, mold-formed pottery goddess figure standing in contrapposto atop an integral tiered base. The white-painted woman balances her body with her left leg while bending her right knee, holds open a shawl draped across her shoulders, grasps a rectangular box in her left arm, and wears a wavy peplos decorated with powder-blue pigment. Her stern visage features downcast, almond-shaped eyes, a broad nose above full lips, elegantly contoured cheeks, and a smooth brow, and her centrally bound, maroon-hued coiffure bears hanging bangs and a rippled top bun. Delicate figures like this example were typically intended as votive funerary offerings. Size: 4.9" W x 11.2" H (12.4 cm x 28.4 cm)
  
  Female figures like this one played an interesting role in Canosan funerary practices as they were placed into Canosan tombs as replacements for large red-figure krater amphorae from the previous century; first, however, mourners had to carry these figures in funerary processions and keep them present while carrying out rituals at and inside the tomb. Virtually all of the statues known from Canosan tombs depict women. However, scholars believe that they represented goddesses or mourners rather than the gender of the deceased individual; young women played a major role as mourners in this society. The Canosans, like other members of Classical society, believed that the spirits of the dead remained at the tomb and watched over the living. Canosan tombs were frequently re-opened to entomb deceased members of the same familial lineage, and this suggests that these statues were perhaps reused to maintain the spiritual connection between the living and the dead.
  
  Provenance: private East Coast, USA collection, acquired in December 2019; ex-Arte Primitivo Gallery, New York, New York, USA (auction #96, December 3, 2019, lot 499); ex-private New York, New York, USA and Paris, France collection, acquired in the 1970s to 1980s; ex-La Reine Margot, Paris, France, 1970s to 1980s
  
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  #152914

  Condition

  Repaired from multiple pieces, with restoration to most of base and along some break lines, and resurfacing with light overpainting along new material and break lines; iron wire added within verso cavity for structural stability. Nicks and abrasions to plinth, limbs, body, head, peripheries, and verso, with softening to some finer details, chipping and fading to original pigmentation, and heavy encrustations. Nice earthen deposits and great remains of original pigment throughout.
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