Watch List notes:

*Italy, After the Antique (second half of 15th century), Ariadne on Naxos, large oval plaquette, Ariadne reclining on a couch is discovered by Dionysus who stands on the left holding a thyrsus and torch and supported by an old man; between them is a youth and an ithyphallic satyr holding a strigil, 78.5mm x 58mm (Bange 86; Scaglia I.16, variant A), pierced, an extremely fine contemporary cast with brown patina, very rare. Provenance: Formerly in the collection of David Abbate, New Jersey. This very rare plaquette may be a pair to a similarly sized oval plaquette of Eros Driving a Biga (as Molinier 9; Kress 249) and together they are unique at this large size when compared to the smaller "After the Antique" plaquettes. There is another example of the present plaquette in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Inv. 27.14.6). The example recorded and illustrated by Bange, in the Bode Museum, Berlin, was lost during WWII, its present whereabouts unknown. See also, Riddick, M., "Donatello. The Birth of Renaissance Plaquettes and their Representation in the Berlin Sculpture Collection", fig. 13 (publication forthcoming). For the smaller and more plentiful plaquettes of this design which copy an antique cameo formerly in the Gonzaga collection see Molinier 7, Bange 87 and Scaglia I.16.
(3000-4000 GBP)