altar
- Museum number
- 1805,0703.433
- Description
-
Marble altar probably dedicated to Apollo. On the front is a raven perched on a festoon of laurel. There are laurel trees on each side of the altar.
- Production date
- 2ndC
- Dimensions
-
Height: 43.18 centimetres
-
Width: 34.29 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Cook 2011, nr. 52:
‘A small alter sacred to Apollo; on the front is a raven surrounded by a festoon of laurel, & a laurel tree on each side’ (T 12/3, dining room 4).
Reported to have been found near Rome (GR 1).
Bought from Jenkins (or through him from Piranesi) in 1768 for £5 (TY 10/3, fo. 25; TY 10/5). The altar is not recorded in TY 10/1, and in TY 10/2 it was added by Townley at the end of the list of purchases from Piranesi with the comment ‘by means of Mr Jenkins’. In TY 10/7 the price is given as £2. A further entry in TY 10/3 (fo. 22), ‘an ara sacred to Apollo, in front a parrot in bas relief 16 inches high’ appears to be a duplicate entry.
Drawings:
* Townley drawings 2010,5006.301.
* Chambers: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury', The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 42-43, figs. 24-25, no. 34.
Bibliography:
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808) VI.17.
- Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, X, pl. 53, fig. 2.
- 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), II, no. 49.
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 386, no. 2488.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1805
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.433
