$75,000
Estimate: $30,000 - $50,000
The Jeff Hunter Collection | Antiquities and Tribal Art
Auction: March 13, 2019 12:00:00 PM EDT
Carved marble, the seated youth hunched slightly forward and turned to his right. His left leg (now lacking) would have been crossed over his right thigh to enable him to remove a thorn from his foot. Raised on a bespoke mount.
H: 19 in.Provenance
Christie's, New York, 7th December 2000, lot 571.Note
The "Boy With Thorn" or "Spinario", that of a seated boy extracting a thorn from the bottom of his foot, is a celebrated form created in Greece in the 3rd century BC. From there it came to Rome, where it was widely copied and adapted. Unlike much of Roman and Hellenistic statuary, the story behind the original image is unclear; in the past it was argued that it depicted a faithful messenger, a shepherd boy, who had delivered his message to the Roman Senate first, only then stopping to remove a painful thorn from his foot. Others now argue it depicts the more prosaic theme of a boy removing the thorn after treading grapes. Whatever its original story, the image has for centuries been feted as a beautiful representation of the human body in complex action.