Chiaramonti Niobid

This running young woman is a Roman copy of a lost Greek original. It is possibly from the group of Niobe and her children set up by Seleukos, a king of Cilicia in south coastal Asia Minor. It was later moved to Rome in 38 BCE to decorate the rebuilt temple of Apollo in the Campus Martius. This group of sculptures was seen and described by Pliny in the first century CE

Number

274

Material

Marble

Location of Original

Rome, Vatican, Belvedere, Braccio Nuovo 13

Size

1.68m

Accession

Purchased in 1884 from Malpieri of Rome

References

Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 309 (n.9-10)
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 71, no.323
Lawrence: Later Greek Sculpture (1927), 13, pl. 12
Lawrence: Classical Sculpture (1928), 277
Amelung: Catalogue of the Vatican Museum I (1903), 422(?), no.176, pl. 44
Richter: Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks (1950), 180, fig.498
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 895, no.597
Haskell & Penny: Taste and the Antique (1981), 279

Date

Roman. Original: early C3 BCE

Provenance

Probably found in the Villa of Hadrian outside Rome. Later in Chiaramonti Museum

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