Siobhan Quin
Senior Specialist
Property from a French Private Collector (Lots 72-80)
Lot 75*
A Roman carnelian intaglio with Thetis riding a triton
3 July 2025, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £10,240 inc. premium
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Anna Marston
Associate Specialist
A Roman carnelian intaglio with Thetis riding a triton
Circa 1st Century A.D.
Set in a 19th Century gold ring, intaglio 1.2cm long, ring size M, weight 6.8g
Set in a 19th Century gold ring, intaglio 1.2cm long, ring size M, weight 6.8g
Footnotes
Provenance:
Gavin Todhunter Collection, mainly formed between the late 1940s-1970s.
An English Private Collection of Ancient Gems, Part I: Property from a Deceased Estate; Christie's London, Antiquities: Including an English Private Collection of Ancient Gems, Part I, 13 May 2003, lot 98.
with Derek Content, London, acquired at the above sale.
Property of a French private collector, acquired from the above in 2006.
The iconography of this intaglio comes from Book XVIII of the Iliad. After Patroclus is killed and stripped of Achilles' armour by Hector, the sea nymph Thetis visits the divine blacksmith, Hephaestus, to ask for new weapons to re-arm her son (Achilles). Hephaestus forges a shield decorated with images that together create a microcosm of the entire world, and through its magnificence inspires Achilles back to the battlefield. A marble lunette in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (obj. no. 1993.11.2), depicting the same scene suggests it was favoured to decorate public buildings and funerary monuments too.