Lot 806

Southern European Marble Relief, Possibly Italian, Angel and Cherub

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Lot 806
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Southern European Marble Relief, Possibly Italian, Angel and Cherub
Southern European Marble Relief, Possibly Italian, Angel and Cherub
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Southern European Marble Relief, Possibly Italian, Angel and Cherub

Estimate: $1,000 - $1,500

Starting Bid: $500

(0 Bids)
by Artemis Fine Arts
July 30, 2026 8:00 AM MDT
Live Auction
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Southern Europe, possibly Italian, ca. 1600–1900 CE. Southern European, possibly Italian. A carved marble relief fragment holds two figures across its surviving field: a kneeling angel alights at the left, wings raised and short tunic caught mid-motion, its hands pressed together in prayer as it turns toward a head of heavy curls cradled between two great sweeping wings, a face without a body watching from the stone. The relief is worked high, swelling nearly free of its ground, the drapery deep-cut, the plumage rendered in overlapping courses that gather and release the light. Its edges break away where the larger composition once continued. The clasped hands identify an interceding angel, that celestial advocate who kneels and prays on behalf of the living or the dead, paired here with a winged cherub head, the abbreviated heavenly host of Catholic devotional art. Size: 16.6" W x 10" H x 4.8" D (42.2 cm W x 25.4 cm H x 12.2 cm D).

Such fragments are the orphans of devotional sculpture. Set into the frame of an altar, the wall of a chapel, or the architecture of a monument, they were made to be read from below and slightly apart, which accounts for the theatrical tilt of the angel's kneeling and the frontal candor of the cherub's stare. Together they would once have attended a central image now lost, perhaps a Madonna, a Christ, a saint, or the effigy of the dead the angel was carved to plead for.

The winged head belongs to a different order of being: the cherub or seraph reduced, by long convention, to face and pinions, an abbreviation of the heavenly host that Western artists inherited from Late Antique angelology and multiplied without restraint from the Renaissance through the Baroque. Two small round holes, drilled with intent into the angel's chest and waist, suggest the figure was once fitted with an applied ornament in metal or separately worked stone, a pectoral, a sash, a pendant swag, long since gone.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA collection; ex-Everything But The House, acquired 2026

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Item # 203623

  • Condition: Fragment of a larger piece with some losses to face of angel as well as chips, nicks, and abrasions throughout. Liberal remaining detail and scattered patina throughout. Possibly missing insert at side of angel.

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $749 $25
$750 $1,499 $50
$1,500 $2,999 $100
$3,000 $7,499 $250
$7,500 $14,999 $500
$15,000 $29,999 $1,000
$30,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 + $10,000