Niobe and daughter from the Niobid Group
- Title:
- Niobe and daughter from the Niobid Group
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Unknown (Roman copy)
possibly Skopas or Praxiteles (Greek original)
- Photographer:
- Alexandridis, Annetta
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
1st c. CE (Roman copy)
end of 4th c. BCE (Greek original)
2009 (image)
- Site:
- Rome, Italy (discovery site, area of Basilica of St. John Lateran, 1583) (original)
- Location:
- Warehouse
Rome, Italy (discovery site, area of Basilica of St. John Lateran, 1583) (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0350a
- Accession Number:
- Sage no. 264
321 (pencil), Niobe
350 - File Name:
- CCC_0350a.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 228 (H) cm (complete statue)
- Culture:
- Roman, after Hellenistic
- Style/Period:
- Roman Imperial, after Hellenistic Greek
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
marble sculpture in the round (original) - Subject:
- Niobe (Greek mythology)
- Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 31 (centimeters, height)
- Description:
- This is a damaged section of a cast of a statue of Niobe and her daughter from the Niobid Group housed in the Uffizi in Florence. In its complete form, Niobe stands crouched above and clutching her young daughter, who kneels in front of her mother grasping her around the waist. The cast was made in several sections and is currently in approximately nine pieces in differing states of repair, with some fragments of the work missing. Preserved here is a fragmentary section that includes Niobe's draped right knee and her daughter's buttocks, also draped. The girl's drapery is thin, clingy, and appears wet. A roll of thicker drapery falls to her lower buttocks. The upper edge of the section is separated at the cast join. The lower portion is broken unevenly. This section joins with ID no. 350 and possibly no. 295. It is resting upside down in the photo included with this record. The statue and the group with which it belongs were discovered in Rome in the later sixteenth century. It is an Imperial Roman copy of a Hellenistic work dated to the later fourth century BCE and uncertainly attributed to Skopas or to Praxiteles on the basis of style and a reference in Pliny (HN xxxvi.4).
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
no. 294 - Bibliography:
- Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 274-279
Brunilde S. Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture I: The Styles of ca. 331-200 B.C. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 82-84, pls. 44-47 - Related Work:
- The cast of Niobe and her daughter is in at least nine fragments: ID nos. 257, 295, 350, 350a, 350b, 383, 489, 512, 521.
- Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
Florence, Uffizi Gallery (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.