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Study of the Pergamene Head, or The Dying Alexander

Circa 1900

$600
£457.11
€527.06
CA$839.69
A$938.21
CHF 490.79
MX$11,505.48
NOK 6,271.35
SEK 5,946.90
DKK 3,933.76
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About the Item

Graphite with white heightening on greenish beige wove paper, 17 1/4 x 12 1/2 (437 x 317 mm). Scattered edge wear, tears and losses around the perimeter of the drawing. Margins are wide and the image area is clean and intact. Scattered light soiling and toning, all consistent with age. A dramatic image by a highly skilled draftsman, this works is likely a life study of the Hellenistic sculptural masterpiece of the same title, which is housed in the Uffizi's collection of ancient statues in Florence. It may also be a study of the 16th century copy of the work which is housed in the National Gallery, London. The sculpture in the National Gallery is made of imperial Egyptian porphyry resting on a marble pedestal, and was carved in Florence or Rome from a fragment of imported ancient column. The horizontal line that extends across the neck of the figure in the drawing would indicate that the study is of the work held by the Uffizi, which has an early repair which appears similarly as a line extending horizontally across the area of the figure's Adam's apple. "The sculpture in the Uffizi, which belonged to the Medici from 1579, was long known as "The Dying Alexander" due to a later inscription (‘Alessandro’) on its pedestal. However, there is no actual evidence that it was originally intended to represent the dying hero Alexander the Great. Indeed it is highly unlikely that an ancient Greek sculptor would have made such a dramatic portrait, and The Dying Alexander does not resemble known portraits of Alexander, such as the Azara Herm – a Roman marble copy of a Greek head of Alexander the Great – now in the Louvre, Paris. It has been suggested that the face of the Uffizi original is actually copied from the head of a young giant from the Gigantomachia of Pergamum – an ancient narrative sculptural frieze now in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin." [The National Gallery, London; Inventory No. NG2241].

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