A year or so ago I bought and sold a couple of c. 1875 Grand Tour albumen photos documenting sculptures in the Museum di Napoli (now known as the National Archaeological Museum, Naples); this past week I went back to the same dealer who had put out a few more and I snapped them right up--and this one, especially, I'm very tempted to keep for myself, to have her serve as my guiding light!
The sculpture, known as Diana Efesima, the Farnese Artemis, or Artemis of Ephesus, dates to the 2nd-century AD and is made of alabaster and bronze. It relates to an ancient cult celebrated in Ephesus (now in Izmir Provence, Turkey), where Artemis was venerated as the goddess of nature and ruler of wild beasts. Although not a settled matter, it has been theorized that the forms covering her chest are bull scrotums, sacrificed to the goddess, with a band of acorns hanging above them, and a variety of animals covering the rest of her body--a crab on her chest, bulls, bees and sphinxes covering her lower half, lions climbing up her arms and what sure look like bats to me encircling her glorious head. And then this tower (polus) of a crown. Such a marvel, head to toe, beautifully captured here.
Albumen photo print on thin paper: 9 7/8" x 7 3/4". Original sleeve: 15" x 12". The photo has lived int he sleeve probably forever, so there are light creases at the corner, as documented. One the reverse, in pencil, is a handwritten note noting the materials of the original, I presume noted by the original honor while on their Grand Tour, looking at the real thing.
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