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Museum of Classical Archaeology Databases

Dancing Faun

Roman copy. This faun was dug up in Pompeii in 1830 and acquired its fame almost instantly. Its findspot was named after it — the House of the Faun.

Its completeness, small size, and the rarity of surviving bronzes made it a favourite subject for reproduction in the modest gardens and interiors of aspiring aesthetes. Another feature attractive to the refined tastes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was that the faun seemed to be joyous rather than drunk

Number: 
358
Material: 
Bronze
Location of Original: 

Naples, National Museum 814

Size: 
0.76m
Accession: 

Purchased in 1884 from Geiler of Munich

References: 

Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 347 (n.8)
Bulle: Der Schöne Mensch im Altertum (1922), 66, pl. 102
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 93, no.502
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 893, no.357
Haskell & Penny: Taste and the Antique (1981), 208

Date: 
Roman. Original: Hellenistic
Provenance: 

Found in the House of the Faun in Pompeii in 1830

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