Antiquities

This October, Christie’s Antiquities sale features an impressive selection of works from across the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. The objects represent ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Egyptian and Near Eastern cultures and range in date from the 3rd millennium B.C. to the 7th century A.D.

The sale is led by two Roman marbles from a West Coast Collector: An over-life-sized torso of Mercury and a figure of Asclepius, once in the famed collection of Count Karol Lanckoroński (1848-1933) of Vienna. These two marbles, last on the market in the 1970s, were previously on loan for nearly two decades at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

Other highlights include a Cycladic marble female figure, notable for its extensive, preserved pigment; an important Mycenaean pottery chalice, attributed to the Protome Painter B; a large Egyptian lapis lazuli inscribed scarab; and a Roman marble head of the Eros of Centocelle.

The sale further includes a selection of ancient engraved gems formerly in the Collection of Dr. Elie Borowski (1913-2003). Included in this group is an Archaic Greek gold and carnelian scarab swivel ring with an Amazon, a work that the scholar Sir John Boardman notes is “assured a place in any choice of the ‘top hundred’ of antiquity.”

Christie’s is also honored to present the Collection of Dr. Martha and Artemis Joukowsky. Martha (1936-2022), Professor of Old World Archaeology at Brown University, was perhaps best known for her excavation of the Great Temple at Petra in Jordan. Together with Artemis (1930-2020), who served as Chancellor of Brown from 1997-1998, the couple played an integral role in the university’s academic life. In recognition of their longtime commitment to the study of the ancient world, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World was established in their honor in 2004.