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| Sardinian boat-shaped lamp. Left: Bonhams. Right: Becchina archive (courtesy of Christos Tsirogiannis) |
The history of the piece (or as some would continue to say, the "provenance") is stated as:
Private collection, Austria, acquired in the 1960s in Vienna.
But how can this be? The same lamp appears to have passed through the hands of Palladion Antike Kunst in 1993 and appears in the Becchina archive (with date 12-2-93). Incidentally the lamp sold for SFr 60,000.
Who supplied the history of the piece to Bonhams? What sort of due diligence did Bonhams conduct as part of the cataloguing process? How reliable is the information that the lamp formed part of an old Austrian collection?
Will Bonhams be contacting the Italian authorities about the lamp and its appearance in the Becchina archive?
I am grateful to Associate Professor Christos Tsirogiannis for making the identification from the Becchina archive, and for providing information on this lamp.
2 comments:
It's very similar to the Nuragic boat discovered in 2007 in tomb 74 at MonteVetrano (Salerno), and to another Nuragic boat from an unspecified location in Sardinia (n.cat 13, Thimme 1980) included in Anna Depalmas' and Gasoerini's catalog of Nuragic bronze boats.
It is very similar to the Nuragic bronze boat discovered in 2007 in tomb 47 at Montevetrano (Salerno), and it also bears a striking resemblance to a votive boat from an unspecified location in Sardinia (n. cat.13 Thimme 1980) from Depalmas' and Gasperini's catalog of Nuragic bronze boats.
Thank you for noticing it, it's a very interesting artifact.
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