This marble trapezophoros is one of a pair of supports for a large tabletop that probably stood in the atrium of a wealthy family’s house. Its two sides are finely carved with grape vines and floral sprays issuing from acanthus fronds that bring to mind the intricate vegetal designs on public monuments of the Augustan age, notably the panels with acanthus and swan reliefs on the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome. At either end of the support, the head and torso of a winged griffin emerge from a feline leg. They form a striking contrast to the delicate floral decoration with their deep relief and powerful musculature, thereby solidly grounding what must have been a monumental piece of furniture.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Marble trapezophoros (table support)
Period:Late Republican
Date:1st century BCE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Marble
Dimensions:width 50 3/4in. (128.9cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1913
Accession Number:13.115.1
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1914. "Department of Classical Art: Accessions of 1913." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 9(3): pp. 60, 65, fig. 8.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1917. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 257, fig. 159, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1926. Ancient Furniture: A History of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Furniture. p. 141, fig. 335, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 310–11, fig. 221, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 310–11, fig. 221, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Christine Alexander. 1939. Augustan Art: An Exhibition Commemorating the Bimillennium of the Birth of Augustus. p. 15, fig. 39, New York: Marchbanks Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1966. The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. p. 113, fig. 579, London: Phaidon Press.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1987. Greece and Rome. no. 81, p. 111, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Milleker, Elizabeth J. 2000. The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West no. 23, pp. 42, 205, New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 406, pp. 352, 485–86, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. no. 44, pp. 134–35, 143, New York: Scala Publishers.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.