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Christie’s

Estimate
USD 30,000 – USD 40,000
Price realised
USD 312,500

Via: Artemis Dreaming.

18th Century plaster work from the ceiling of Holy Grave Chapel in Michaelsberg Abbey, Bamberg, Germany.

Wikipedia:

The Sarcophagus of the Spouses (Italian: Sarcofago degli Sposi) is considered one of the great masterpieces of Etruscan art. It is a late sixth-century BC Etruscan anthropoid sarcophagus from Caere, and is in the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, Rome. It is 1.14 m high by 1.9 m wide, and is made of terracotta which was once brightly painted. It depicts a married couple reclining at a banquet together in the afterlife, and was found in 19th-century excavations at the necropolis of Cerveteri (ancient Caere). The portrayal of a married couple sharing a banqueting couch is distinctly an Etruscan style; in contrast, Greek vases depicting banquet scenes reflect the custom that only men attended dinner parties.

These are the people your typical New Yorker subscribers imagine themselves to be.

Just looking at them, you regret missing the food, wine, and conversations at their weekend parties.

Romeo Battini takes photographs in ruins and abandoned locations and publishes them on Instagram. He found this statue hanging in the cellar of an abandoned castle in Italy.

Via Messy Nessy.

Chicago Oriental Institute’s colossal head of a bull from Persepolis.

Carved from dark grey limestone and highly polished, the head measures over two metres high and a metre and a half wide and weighs an estimated ten tons. Enormous yet beautifully sculptured, the head was attached to the body of a bull that still stands as one of a pair flanking the northern portico of the so-called Hundred-Columns Palace (also called the Throne Hall).

Entrances to important buildings were frequently ‘protected’ by pairs of colossal animals (some of which were mythological guardian creatures) in the ancient Near East. And the pair of bulls the Chicago head was once associated with would have been no different. The bodies of the bulls were carved in relief on the side walls of the portico, whereas the heads were carved in the round.

Sometime in the past, perhaps when the city was sacked, both heads became detached from their bodies. They were found not far from the bodies during excavations in 1932/3 by archaeologists from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Unfortunately, the ears and horns, which were clearly not carved from the same block of stone but added separately, were not recovered.

Joachim Friess, Diana and Stag automata drinking cup, 1620, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

href=”https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/193623″>Elizabeth Cleland, 2017:

This object was prized, though not unique; other versions survive, all targeted at the wealthiest clientele. A wind-up mechanism once moved the group forward on hidden wheels, making it vibrate as if with life. Uniting modern technology, precious casework, and visual appeal, automatons were celebrated as a novelty entertainment for guests of the most moneyed classes. Removing the stag’s head reveals a drinking vessel; the diner in front of whom the piece stopped had to drain the cup.

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Hybridtechcar:

In the Rzhevsky district of the Tver region, near the village of Khoroshevo, a memorial to the Soviet Soldier will be installed, which will be visible from the federal highway M-9. The monument commemorates the heroism and courage of the Red Army soldiers who fought in the bloody battles for Rzhev and on the perimeter of the Rzhev-Vyazma ridge. The project of the memorial was designed by the sculptor Andrei Korobtsov from Belgorod. His work “I was killed near Rzhev” became the best among 19 projects. Construction will begin this year and will be completed by the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory in 2020.

Bust of Julius Caesar. Romano-Egyptian, ca. 100s BC. Green basalt, 17 5/16 × 10 ¼ × 9 13/16 in. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Doesn’t he look wily?

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Uta von Ballenstedt (c. 1000 — 23 October before 1046), a member of the House of Ascania, was Margravine of Meissen from 1038 until 1046, the wife of Margrave Eckard II. She is also called Uta of Naumburg.

When Umberto Eco was asked with which women from European art he would most like to spend the evening, he replied: “In first place, ahead of all others, with Uta von Naumburg.”

— Elephant.
Place of origin: Japan
Period: Kamakura period, 1185-1333
Date: ca. 1250
Medium: Wood, metal, crystal, and pigments.

Via Belacqui.

Madonna of OÅ‚obok, Late 12th century. Lime wood, gesso, polychrome. The earliest specimen of romanesque wooden sculpture preserved in Poland. The statue served as a reliquary, as indicated by a hollow in the throne where the relics were kept. From a Cistercian convent established in 1213 in OÅ‚obok in Great Poland. The statue references the theological concept of Sedes Sapientiae, the Throne of Wisdom, characteristic of early medieval liturgy. It symbolizes the idea of Mary as the throne for the Incarnated Logos (Christ), in accordance with the dogma of the Mother of God, adopted by the Council of Ephesus in 431. National Museum, Warsaw.

Sculpture of an Enthroned King, ca. 1230–35, Made in Lombardy or Veneto, Italy, Metropolitan Museum.