Here’s a very interesting (to me) lot from the upcoming June auction of antiquities at Christies this June. As often seems to be the case, the poor lass is legless, headless, and armless, but what’s really interesting (again, to me) is the evidence on her shoulders that her hair was down. I can’t recall ever seeing a sculptural depiction of Venus with her hair down … in theory, that would mean this isn’t a ‘bathing’ Venus but she’s in some other mode.

A ROMAN MARBLE VENUS

UPDATE (just a short time later) — thanks to Caroline Lawrence (who twittered an example from Rhodes, which does seem to be in a ‘bathing’ pose) and Francesca Tronchin (e.g.) for pointing me to sculptural representations of Venus/Aphrodite Anadyomene (‘rising from the sea’ … a la Botticelli). There don’t seem to be an awful lot of them

Yesterday I was wading through a pile of Roman glass etc. (none of which was very interesting) and decided I wasn’t going to cover auctions any more. Then, of course, something interesting came up from the Ventura County Collection again, via Bonham’s. Here’s an item at Live Auctioneers officially described as Roman, c. 100-300AD., a life size marble carving of a clinched right hand and it’s clutching something. Any guesses as to what’s in the hand?

Plenty of stuff from Live Auctions this week, with varying degrees of provenance:

• Roman, c. 100-300AD., a nice and very small silver (ring; ex Ventura County Collection … not sure what that means)

• Roman, c. 100-300AD., a lot of 2 small and choice (ditto … a couple of flasks)

• Roman Egypt, Alexandria, c. 305-30BC., a nice crème slip fragment of Zeus. (ditto)

• Etruscan, c. 4th century BC., a very rare thick terra cotta ossuary (ex Thaddeus Bleeker collection; collected in early 1900s)

• Roman, c. 100-300AD., a small and finely crafted bronze fibula (ditto …)

• Roman, c. 100-300AD., a very nice tall flask (ditto)

• A Collection of Eight Roman Glass Flasks and Ungue (ex Indianapolis MoA)

… there are also a number of coins (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a coin auctioned online with a real provenance):

• (138-129 B.C.) Antiochus VII. Silver Tetradrachm (scroll to the bottom of the page for more)

Not sure why there’s such a variation in the detail (or reporting at all) of the provenance.

… again, without any information about origins. This time, it’s a Roman dagger (pugio) and spear tip:

This is lot 901 and is the only Roman item with a photo in this section of the online catalog. Interestingly/suspiciously, it is flanked by A Collection of Roman Glass Artifacts (898), A Roman Earthenware Patera (899), A Collection of Five Near East Earthenware Unguentariums (900), A Collection of Metal Work and Earthenware (902), and A Collection of Nine Roman or Near Eastern Earthenware Vessels (903), none of which have photos, but all of which come from the Indianapolis Museum of Art. There follow two other ancient (Egyptian) items, sans provenance, photographed apparently at the same time as the dagger. After that come items hailing from Sotheby’s etc.. Read into that what you will …

Just last week my spiders began picking up items from Live Auctioneers … apparently others have been doing so as well, as both  Dorothy King and ARLT mentioned a few days ago on what was actually the first one that popped into my box. Today I get notice of this “1st to 3rd Century Marble Roman Head”:

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Unfortunately, unlike the previous auction, this one doesn’t have any origins listed or any information of use at all. The Live Auctioneers are affiliated somehow with eBay (although their auctions run differently); I would think they would be more responsible in regards to provenance … I certainly hope this doesn’t become a method for the ne’er-do-wells to do an end run around the folks monitoring eBay for potentially suspicious antiquities sales.