- Museum number
- 1805,0703.183
- Description
-
Marble tombstone (stele) of Xanthippos: he sits on a fine high-backed chair, holding out a shoemaker's last, an indication of his profession. Beside him are two small girls, presumably his daughters, whom he is leaving behind.
- Production date
- 420BC (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 83.82 centimetres
-
Width: 50.80 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Cook 2011, nr. 159:
‘A bas relief representing a draped aged man, sitting in a chair with a votive foot in his right hand; two young women, of a much inferior size to this figure stand near it in an Act of Veneration, and in the margin above it is the word Xanthippos in Greek. This figure may represent Pluto, the Jupiter of the Inferi, of whom the foot is the symbol, and have been the front of the sepulchral cippus of that great Athenian General, whose name is above inscribed, or it may be a votive portrait of himself, offering a foot to the Deity for the cure of the wound, which he received in that part at the battle of Mycale, [at which he commanded ye Athenian fleet and] which happened in the 75th Olympiad, 479 years before our æra. This monument was brought from Athens by the late Doctor Askew’ (TY 12/3, dining room 15; the clause in brackets was added by Townley to the Towneley Hall Catalogue).
This Attic grave-relief can now be dated to about 420 BC or slightly later (Stupperich), much too late to have referred to Xanthippos the father of Pericles, as Townley thought.
Purchased by Lyde Browne at the Askew sale in 1775. The auction price was recorded as 6 ½ Guineas (£6.16s.6d.) by Ellis, who mistakenly thought that it was acquired by Townley himself at the sale.
Bought from Lyde Browne, probably in July 1775 for £18 (TY 12/1) or £20 (TY 10/5-7; TY 10/3, fo. 13).
Date:
440-430 BC, cf. Parthenon (Diepolder); ca. 420 BC (Stupperich); 1st quarter IV BC (Dohrn, who gives its find spot as ‘vom Kloster Asomata bei Athen’).
Drawings:
* Townley drawings 2010,5006.285 and 2010,5006.1877.1;
* Zoffany: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 36-37, figs. 19-20, no. 16;
* Nollekens: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 45, figs. 26-27, no. 2;
* Chambers: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury’, The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 42-43, figs. 24-25, no. 7.
Bibliography:
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808), VI.23;
- Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, X, pl. 33;
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. I (London 1892), 310-1, no. 628;
- H. Diepolder, Die attischen Grabreliefs des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v.Chr. (Berlin, 1931), 11, 13, pl. 4;
- T. Dohrn, Attische Plastik vom Tode des Phidias bis zum Wirken der grossen Meister des IV Jahrh. v. Chr. (Krefeld, 1957), 141-2, no. 51, pl. xxvii b;
- R. Stupperich, Staatsbegäbnis und Privatgrabmal in klassischen Athen (Diss. Münster, 1977), 178, no. 455 (bibl.);
- H. Rühfel, Das Kind in der griechischen Kunst (Mainz, 1984), 126-7, fig. 51;
- S. Ensoli, L’Heroon di Dexileos nel Ceramico di Atene. Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Memorie, Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, Serie VIII, vol. XXIX fasc. 2 (Rome, 1987), 257, with note 295, pl. XIIIa;
- B. F. Cook, Greek and Roman Art in the British Museum (London, 1976), 106-7, fig. 84;
- B. F. Cook, The Townley Marbles (London, 1985), 27-8, fig. 27;
- T. Potts, Civilization: Ancient Treasures from the British Museum (Exhibition Catalogue, Canberra/Melbourne, 1990), 146-7, no. 71;
- The Treasures of the British Museum: Art and Man (Exhibition Catalogue, Tokyo, 1990), 116-7 no. 113;
- C. W. Clairmont, Clasical Attic Tombstones I Catalogue (Kilchberg, 1993), 402-4, no. 1.630 (bibl.);
- Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum (Oxford 1874-1916) 123; IG II2, 12332;
- B. F. Cook, Greek Inscriptions (London, 1987), 14-15, fig. 6.
- Location
- On display (G19)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1990, 24 Mar-10 Jun, Australia, Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, Civilization: Ancient Treasures from the British Museum, cat. no.71
1990, 28 Jun-23 Sep, Australia, Melbourne, Museum of Victoria, Civilization: Ancient Treasures from the British Museum, cat. no.71
1990, 20 Oct-9 Dec, Japan, Tokyo, Setagaya Art Museum, Treasures of the British Museum, cat. no.113
1991, 5 Jan-20 Feb, Japan, Yamaguchi, Prefectural Museum of Art, Treasures of the British Museum, cat. no.113
1991, 9 Mar-7 May, Japan, Osaka, National Museum of Art, Treasures of the British Museum, cat. no.113
- Acquisition notes
- The sculpture was acquired in Athens around 1747 by Dr Anthony Askew and passed eventually into the collection of Charles Townley.
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.183
