- Museum number
- 1805,0703.128
- Description
-
Marble relief: a maenad and two satyrs in a Bacchic procession.
- Production date
- 100 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 0.99 metres
-
Length: 1.21 metres
-
Thickness: 0.19 metres
- Curator's comments
-
The figures on this neo-Attic relief derive from Athenian prototypes of the 4th century BC.
For the Villa of Sette Bassi and Gavin Hamilton's excavation there, see:
R. Neudecker, Die Skulpturenausstattung roemischer Villen in Italien (Mainz 1988), 207-209 cat no. 50.6.
I. Bignamini and C. Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome (London 2010), 134-140 [this sculpture p. 138 no. 7].
Five other marbles from this site are in the British Museum collection.
-
Cook 2011, nr. 152:
An undated account from Hamilton (TY 8/112) seems to belong in 1776. It lists two objects: an ‘urna cineraria’ at £8 and a ‘Basso relievo of 3 Bacchants’ at £100. The relief is readily identified as 1805.7-3.128 (Sculpture 2193), the cinerary urn is inferred from later documents to be 1805.7-3.174 (Sculpture 2408).
‘A bas relief representing a Bacchanalian choral procession, led by a Mystes with her head thrown backwards in an enthusiastic motion; she is followed by a faun playing on the double Tibia, and lastly by another intoxicated Faun carrying a Thyrsus in his right hand, and the left arm extended and covered with a lion’s skin; at his feet is a leopard; the two first figures are also covered in part with a lion’s skin. found 1775 in ruins 5 miles from ye St John’s Gate on ye road to Frascati from Rome’ (TY 12/3, dining room 44).
Hamilton confirmed that the findspot was Roma Vecchia in his survey of excavations (TY7/638; cf. the version published by Smith in JHS). Townley’s later statement that the relief was found ‘at Castiglione, the country formerly called the Frigidi Gabii’ ("First Townley Inventory", relief 12; cf. TY 12/22/61/1, TY 12/6, and the 1804 Parlour Catalogue, dining room 46) is, as noted by Smith, an error.
Bought from Hamilton for £100 (TY 10/5-7; TY 10/3, fo. 33; TY 12/1; ST 1, fo. 21r). The relief was first mentioned in a letter from Hamilton dated simply 28 November, which must belong in 1775 (TY 7/599). On 30 December he gave the price as £100 (TY 7/601). The Bill of Lading was sent on 2 March 1776 (TY 7/606/1), and by 15 June the relief had arrived in London (Townley’s letter of that date being acknowledged on 12 July, TY 7/612).
Date:
Trajanic (Fuchs)
Drawings:
* Townley drawings 2010,5006.221 (identified by I. D. Jenkins with one ‘Drawn by Signor Tendi 1794’); 2010,5006.1877.14 and 15.
* Zoffany: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury', The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 36-37, figs. 19-20, no. 17.
* Nollekens : B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury', The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 46, figs. 28-29, no. 9.
* Chambers: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury', The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 42-43, figs. 24-25, no. 38.
Bibliography:
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808) III.12.
- Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, II, pl.12.
- A Guide to the Graeco-Roman Sculptures in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum) (2 vols., London 1874 [2nd ed. 1879] and 1876), I, no. 179.
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 255-6 no. 2193.
- W. Fuchs, Die Vorbilder der neuattischen Reliefs (JdI. Ergänzungsheft 20, 1959), 180, no. 14.
- R. Neudecker, Die Skulpturenausstattung römischer Villen in Italien (Mainz am Rhein 1990), 208, no. 50.6.
- Olaf Dräger, Religionem significare. Studien zu reich verzierten
römischen Altären und Basen aus Marmor (RM Ergänzungsheft 33, Mainz 1994), 34, note 126 (bibl.).
- Location
- On display (G23)
- Acquisition date
- 1805
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.128
