Grave Stele of a Youth and his Dog

Some grave stelai have only the deceased shown. Here a solitary young man sits reading a scroll, with his dog under his chair. Alongside the young man is a box with a hinged lid the scroll has been taken from. It has the characteristic shape of a grave monument with palmette decorations in a roughly triangular shape at the top.

The sculptor had two attempts at carving this stele. On the back of the original slab (not the cast) is an early version of the same composition, which for some reason was abandoned

Number

264

Material

Marble

Location of Original

Abbey of Grottaferrata, near Rome

Size

1.10m

References

Conze: Die Attischen Grabreliefs (1890-1922) II, 132, no.622, pl. CXXI
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 66, no.297

Date

C4 BCE

Provenance

Unknown. First recorded in Grottaferrata in 1829

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