A Cypriot bronze lamp holder

Footnotes

Provenance:
Cpt. Edwin Henry Lawrence F.S.A. (1819-1891) collection, London.
Catalogue of Cypriote antiquities, the property of the late Edwin Henry Lawrence, Esq. F.S.A., etc; Sotheby's, London, 25 April 1892, lot 163.
Anonymous sale; Münzen und Medaillen A.G., Basel, Auktion 34, 6 May 1967, lot 3 (and Sonderliste J, Bronzegefässe und Bronzegeräte der Antike, Basel, 1968, p. 8-9, no. 14).
with Jean-David Cahn AG, Basel, 2000.
Private collection, Switzerland, acquired from the above in 2007.

Edwin Henry Lawrence F.S.A. (1819-1891) was the great-nephew of the Regency-period society painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. Amongst other collecting interests, he amassed a considerable collection of Egyptian and Cypriot antiquities during his lifetime. The Cypriot antiquities were mostly collected or excavated on Cyprus between 1876 and 1878 by his future son-in-law Alessandro Palma di Cesnola. Following his death artworks from his collection entered the collections of the British Museum and the first Pitt-Rivers collection in Oxford, as well as ending up in innumerable other international institutions following four large sales of his collection at Sotheby's in the late 1890s.

Cf. two similar lamp holders in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 74.51.5639 and 74.51.5641, both formerly in the Cesnola collection. It is noted that the form likely originated with the Phoenicians. Examples are also held in the British Museum (acc. nos. 1891,0806.84, 1894,1101.240, 1896,0201.303), as well as the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Antikensammlung in Berlin (inv. Ant. Misc. 8142,547 in S. Brehme, M. Brönner, V. Karageorgjis, et. al., Antikensammlung Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Antike Kunst aus Zypern, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2002, p. 173, no. 186, said to be from the royal necropolis of Tamassos, section. IV, tomb 16). For a fuller discussion of the known examples, see I. K. Raubtschek, 'Cypriote Bronze Lamp Stands in the Cesnola Collection of the Standford University Museum of Art', in Proceedings of the Xth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Ankara, 1978, pp. 699-707.