Phoenix Ancient Art S.A.

Works of Art

Cycladic Marble Kandila

Period: Transitional Period, circa 2800-2700 B.C.
Culture: Cycladic
Category: Array
Dimensions: Height: 13.5cm
Price: POR
Provenance:

Ex-Private collection London,

Ex-Christos C. Bastis Collection, New York

Condition: Intact, with minor chips, superb original surface with reddish accretion.

Description

The globular body sits on a low, integral, splayed pedestal foot deeply concave beneath. The rim is in the form of a short vertical cylindrical collar. Four vestigial, pierced lug handles are arranged equidistantly around the upper third of the body. The interior is finely carved, reducing the thickness of the walls at the collar, for example, to some 4mm, allowing the marble to become quite translucent. The surface is covered with an attractive reddish accretion probably yielded by its burial conditions.

Patz Getz-Preziosi remarks on the unusually rounded shape of this vessel, reminiscent of a pomegrenate, and calling it atypical and suggesting it is a transitional piece, on the cusp between Early Bronze Age / Cycladic I and II, and that this particular example is the best one known of this group!

Bibliography

Published:

'Antiquities from the Collection of Christos G. Bastis', cat. ex., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987, no.47.

GETZ-PREZIOSI, 'Early Cycladic Art in North American Collections', cat. ex., Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1987, no. 105.

GETZ-GENTLE, 'Stone Vessels of the Cyclades in the Early Bronze Age', University Park, Pennsylvania, 1996, p.338, pl.8a.