Seated Figure of a Philosopher
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
400 BC - 300 BC
Materials
Pentelic marble,
Measurements
1455 x 645 mm; 330 mm (Height); 1365 mm (Length)
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486325
Summary
Pentelic marble, Seated Figure of a Philosopher, Attic, circa 2nd century AD, but head of 4th century BC type. The marble figure is of an elderly man seated on a stone seat without a back, the right arm lying horizontally across the body, whilst the left is raised and supported on the right hand. A cloak enfolds the body leaving the right arm, side and chest bare. The torso is of Pentelic marble and the head is of Italian marble. A statue from the Barberini Palace, Rome, where in 1738 it was described as lacking a head and an arm. The head, added by the mid-18th-century restorer, is antique and reminiscent of portraits of Demosthenes, the Athenian orator.
Provenance
Apparently sold to the Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont (1710-1763) in 1760 by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (Rome 1716 - Rome 1799); thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72), arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M. Treasury.
Marks and inscriptions
19 (painted on front of base)