RUPERT WACE ANCIENT ART PRESENTS ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Tuesday, 19 September 2006 09:03

LONDON - Rupert Wace Ancient Art will be one of 15 leading dealers in antiquities participating in the Basel Ancient Art Fair (BAAF) taking place from Friday 3 to Wednesday 8 November 2006 in the Wenkenhof, an attractive 18^th century mansion set in its own parkland at Riehen just outside Basel, Switzerland.  Rupert Wace Ancient Art will exhibit over 100 pieces, with prices ranging from 2,500 to over 100,000 Swiss francs (around £1,000 to over £50,000).

Now in its third year, BAAF is already recognized as the most important fair of its kind for connoisseurs and collectors of Classical, Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities.  All 15 exhibitors from five countries are members of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADDA) who abide by a strict code of ethics guaranteeing the authenticity of everything they sell and exercising extensive due diligence regarding provenance.

One highlight of Rupert Wace’s stand will be an exceptional Etrusco-Italic terracotta head of Alexander the Great dating from the first half of the 3^rd century BC.  Finely and subtly modeled by hand, the head is crowned by thick curly hair falling to the shoulders, bound by a fillet (symbolic of royal position), with stray hairs across the cheek that were drawn into the clay when wet.  This head, with full lips, aquiline nose and eyes with incised pupils, is typical of an ‘Alexander type’ portrait, the hero or god depicted with the idealized features of Alexander.  The back is roughly finished, implying that it was an antefix from a very high relief of the type found in some 4^th-3^rd century BC clay architectural sculpture.  Etrusco-Italic antefixes modeled, not moulded, in high relief such as this are rare and this fine head from a British private collection will be priced in the region of £30,000.

An outstanding Hellenistic terracotta depicts the tall, slender figure of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty and sexual rapture, naked except for a fall of drapery retaining traces of paint over her left arm.  Her raised right arm holds up a corner of the drapery as if either concealing or revealing her perfect body.  Her head, held upright, gazes slightly to her right and thick, luxuriant hair, parted in the centre, falls over her shoulders.  The rectangular base is decorated in relief with an open-mouthed female mask representing a hetaira (courtesan) of the type who turns out to be a ‘good Athenian girl’ despite her circumstances.  Standing on a high base, literally on a pedestal, our eyes focus on the goddess as an object of beauty and desire. The figure, dating to the 2^nd-1^st century BC, was acquired by a private collector in Australia prior to 1970 and is offered at Basel for £28,000.

Among Rupert Wace’s Egyptian pieces is a finely carved wood ushabti for Ypu dating from the New Kingdom, late 18^th-early 19^th Dynasty, circa 1320-1250 BC.  Ushabtis or shabti-figures played an important role in Egyptian culture.  Considered servants of the dead, they were placed in the tomb in order magically to come alive whenever the deceased was required to work in the next world.  This elegant example shows Ypu, obviously a nobleman or courtier as he is shown wearing an elaborate double layered wig, its curls falling to his chest revealing disc earrings in his pierced earlobes.  He stands with arms crossed at the chest and holding hoes and a brick mould indicating his labor in the hereafter.  Previously in private collections in France and the USA it will be offered for around £32,000.

 Rupert Wace has been dealing in antiquities for over 30 years, opening his own business in 1988. He has handled the private sales of antiquities from the British Rail Pension Fund and his clients include the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the National Museum of Wales, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, Staatliche Museum in Munich, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art.  As well as being a member of IAADA, Rupert Wace is Chairman of the Antiquities Dealers Association in the UK which also rigorously upholds the ethics of dealing in ancient art.

Visit: www.rupertwace.co.uk