Object Description
This late Georgian antique marble statue is after the antique, depicting a scale fragment of the eminent 2nd century statue ‘Sleeping Ariadne’. Circa 1780, this carved white marble sculpture is over 240 years old and depicts Ariadne’s torso as she appears in the antique, swathed in cloth with eyes closed, one arm raised while resting her head on the other, adorned with her recognisable snake armband. It is mounted on a painted plaster socle for use as a decorative display piece.
The larger antique marble statue of ‘Sleeping Ariadne’ from which torso fragment is based is one of the most renowned statues of antiquity in the world. Dating from the 2nd century AD, it has been housed in the Vatican Museums since the early 1500s but is in fact a copy itself, based on a lost original believed to date from the 2nd century BC.