18th Century and Earlier Figurines and Sculptures

This is a very fine Ancient Roman Bronze Tiger Head dating to the 1st-2nd century AD. The Ancient Roman cast bronze head of the Tiger has extremely fine quality casting and superb ...

This Ancient Roman Military Bronze eagle and stag, dating from the 1st to 2nd century AD, stands at a modest yet captivating 3 1/8 inches in height. The finely cast bronze sculpture ...

A Magnificent 18th Century English Gilt Bronze and White Marble Clock. Clock is Beautifully Comprised with a Bird Form Finial over the Circular dial with Arabic Numerals, flanked by ...

This fine hardstone cameo depicts a woman or men wearing a wreath of ivy. In Greek and Roman mythology the ivy wreath worn around head was the attribute of a followers of Dyonisos a...

This rare button features a shell cameo of a young man carved in antique manner. The cameo is mounted in a silver button.

ROSARY BEAD WITH WENDEKOPF Germany, 16th century Bone Weight 12 grams; dimensions 29 × 23 × 24 cm A double-sided bead made of bone with a finely carved head of Christ on one side an...

Spectacular, Art Deco, pendant, depicting an encased, renaissance cameo of a Cupid baby and mother lying on a cloud in sky background. This unique a...

French neo classic desk seal. Wonderful desk seal, created in France during the late 18th century, back in the 1798-1808. This magnificent piece of art was conceived as a miniature sculpture mounted in a Louis XVI neoclassical style base. This base is crafted in 18 karats gold over silver with chiseled and incised decorations, supporting a magnificent extremely detailed carving of a women. The carved piece, depicts, the naked portrait bust of the classical Greek-Roman goddess of the flowers and nature Flora (Heba), facing forward and exhibiting her breasts, undressed and crowned with flowers, wheat and ivy. Flora or Heba She was the deity of the flowering plants, fertility, spring, and blossoming. Although she was a minor figure compared to other goddesses of the Roman empire, she was important as a fertility goddess. Flora was responsible for the abundance of the crops in spring, so her worship strengthened as this season approached. Her name derives from the Latin floris, which means flower, and her Greek counterpart was the nymph, Chloris. The Sabine King Titus Tatius introduced Flora into the Roman pantheon...

A figure of Medusa Gorgon seems to be frightening and dangerous, but if you remember her story, then Medusa was an innocently killed heroine who suffered because of her beauty This No Oil Emerald...

Very rare wooden icon depicting "San Nicola di Mozajsk" Condition: the painting is in excellent condition, perfect in all its parts

The most beautiful on Earth - her name is Psyche. ⠀ Psyche was a mortal woman whose extraordinary beauty made Aphrodite jealous and she sent her son Eros to punish Psyche. But he fell in love with her instead. After many challenges and hardships, Eros took her to Olympus and made her the Goddess of Soul. ⠀ In ancient mosaic...

AMULET PENDANT WITH FIGA Spain, c. 1620–1630 Jet, silver, and enamel Weight 60.7 grams; dimensions 85 × 49 × 18 mm Large pendant in the shape of a hand carved from jet with a clinched fist in the figa (Spanish higa) gesture. In the palm of the hand is a heart carved in relief and on the back a six-ray star in a circle. The silver mount covers the wrist like a cuff and is decorated with a frilled border, and on the front with collet-set bosses with silver C-scrolls against blue enamel; on the back is a roundel in relief with floral motif. Domed base for the pendant loop in pea-pod form. The figa (also fica or higa) represents an age-old symbol of protection against the evil eye and other demonic threats. Its origins were pagan and buried deep in antiquity. Roman examples, such as one found recently in an archeological excavation in London, also make it clear that the protective qualities are based in a sexual symbolism–particularly the power of the phallus. The Roman bone figa/phallus in effect represents the phallus twice; that is, the gesture made by the figa hand is generally explained as fingers representing the female genitalia (vulva) penetrated by the phallus of the thumb. But other interpretations are less specific, including explanations that the left hand is the feminine principle, and the right hand is the masculine. In Spain, jet figa are common; we see one in the portrait of Anne of Austria the infanta (p. 75). That is not to say that the objects are not sumptuous or treasured. Jet was a very valuable material, and in many examples like this one, the figa is embellished with beautiful enameling or is even gem-studded. Comparable objects occur in equally sumptuous materials such as rock crystal. The enameled setting allows a dating of these objects that otherwise might prove difficult, given that the production of such objects in Spain is so consistent over centuries. Indeed, there is another, even more elaborately carved example in this collection, attached to the “magic belt” (no. 9). That example may belong to an earlier group. That figa includes deeply excavated carving, including on the upper surface, an M-shaped design that Walter Leo Hildburgh links to the heart shape (as it occurs more explicitly on this example). Hildburgh argues that its presence is especially common on these objects and that it originally represented the Sacred Heart of Mary...

Reliquary Pendant with Christ on the Cross Germany, c. 1480–1500 Gilded silver Weight 35 grams; dimensions 69 × 46 × 8 mm A mixture of forms gives t...

An Ancient Egyptian funerary figurine made of faience in a modern gold pendant mounting.