
Siobhan Quin
Senior Specialist
Sold for £7,040 inc. premium
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Provenance:
Phyllis Cornish Collection (1894-1968), Salcombe Regis, Devon.
M. R. Tomkinson (1916-1986), inherited from the above.
English private collection inherited from the above in 1986.
Born from the neck of the beheaded Medusa, the winged horse Pegasus was captured and tamed by one of the great heroes of Greek mythology, Bellerophon, who rode him to slay the fierce lion-headed Chimera with his lead-tipped spear. In late antiquity the soaring Pegasus was interpreted as an allegory for the immortality of the soul; the Greek astronomer Ptolemy was the first to catalogue his namesake constellation in the 2nd Century A.D.. See the British Museum, London, reg. no. 1814,0704.1564 for another bronze fitting which depicts Pegasus side-on and complete.