13th Dec, 2023 13:00

Fine Asian Art Holiday Sale

 
  Lot 236
 

236

A BACTRIAN STONE RITUAL OBJECT, LATE 3rd TO EARLY 2nd MILLENNIUM BC

Sold for €1,950

including Buyer's Premium


Lot details

Published: Massimo Vidale, Treasures from the Oxus: The Art and Civilization of Central, page 75, fig. 61.

Oxus Civilization. The stone of a greenish-black color, the staff of long cylindrical form tapering on one side.

Provenance: Axel Vervoordt Art & Antiques, Antwerp, Belgium. Paolo Bertuzzi, acquired from above in 2003. A copy of the original invoice addressed to Mr Paolo Bertuzzi, dated 30 July 2003, and stating a purchase price of EUR 6,800 or approx. EUR 11,500 (adjusted for inflation at the time of writing), accompanies this lot. Axel Vervoordt (born 1947) is a Belgian antiques and art dealer, collector, and interior designer. He founded his company in Antwerp in 1969, and in 1998, he and his family acquired an industrial site which they turned into a small green town that offers spaces for art and exhibits works by renowned artists such as Anish Kapoor, James Turrell, Marina Abramovic, Otto Boll, and Tatsuo Miyajima. Vervoordt further designed several spaces for, among others, Robert de Niro, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye West. Paolo Bertuzzi (1943-2022) was a fashion stylist from Bologna, Italy. He was the son of Enrichetta Bertuzzi, founder of Hettabretz, a noted Italian fashion company with customers such as the Rothschild family, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. Paolo Bertuzzi later took over his mother’s business and designed exclusive pieces, some of which were exhibited in the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. He was also an avid collector of antiques for more than 60 years. His collection includes both archaic and contemporary art, and he edited two important books about Asian art, Goa Made - An Archaeological Discovery, about a large-scale archaeological project carried out with the Italian and Indonesian governments, and Majapahit, Masterpieces from a Forgotten Kingdom.
Condition: Good condition commensurate with age showing expected old wear and traces of use, obvious losses, some chips, few encrustations, and natural fissures.

Dimensions: Height 110 cm

The Oxus Civilization or Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), recently dated to c. 2250-1700 BC, is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilization of Central Asia, previously dated to c. 2400-1900 BC, by Sandro Salvatori, in its urban phase or integration era. Though it may be called the “Oxus civilization”, apparently centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River) in Bactria, most of the BMAC’s urban sites are actually located in Margiana (modern Turkmenistan) on the Murghab river delta and the Kopet Dagh mountain range. There are a few later sites in northern Bactria (c. 1950–1450 BC), the territory of southern Uzbekistan, but they are mostly graveyards belonging to the BMAC-related Sapalli culture. A single BMAC site, known as Dashli, lies in southern Bactria, the territory of northern Afghanistan. Sites found further east, in southwestern Tajikistan, though contemporary with the main BMAC sites in Margiana, are only graveyards, with no urban developments associated with them. BMAC sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi when he was excavating in northern Afghanistan between 1969 and 1979. Sarianidi’s excavations revealed numerous monumental structures in many sites, fortified by impressive walls and gates. Reports on the BMAC were mostly confined to Soviet journals. A journalist from The New York Times wrote in 2001 that during the years of the Soviet Union, the findings were largely unknown to the West until Sarianidi’s work began to be translated in the 1990s.

The precise use of these objects found in graves at Gonur in Margiana, in the cenotaphs of Sibri near Mehrgarh (Pakistan) and at Tepe Hissar and Shahdad in eastern Iran, is still unknown: they must have been used for some specific task, because their functional end, as a rule is worn, and finally deposed in the graves after the funeral.

Literature comparison:
Compare a related ritual object with cylindrical shaft tapering then flaring towards the flat ends illustrated in M.-H. Pottier, Matériel Funéraire de la Bactriane Méridionale de l'Age du Bronze, Paris, 1984, pp. 16, pl. V, fig. 7, no. 31.

Auction result comparison:
Type: Related
Auction: Christie’s London, 2 July 2018, lot 40
Price: GBP 15,000 or approx. EUR 23,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A Bactrian stone idol, circa 3rd-2nd millennium B.C.
Expert remark: Compare the related form and note the larger size (138 cm).

 

Published: Massimo Vidale, Treasures from the Oxus: The Art and Civilization of Central, page 75, fig. 61.

Oxus Civilization. The stone of a greenish-black color, the staff of long cylindrical form tapering on one side.

Provenance: Axel Vervoordt Art & Antiques, Antwerp, Belgium. Paolo Bertuzzi, acquired from above in 2003. A copy of the original invoice addressed to Mr Paolo Bertuzzi, dated 30 July 2003, and stating a purchase price of EUR 6,800 or approx. EUR 11,500 (adjusted for inflation at the time of writing), accompanies this lot. Axel Vervoordt (born 1947) is a Belgian antiques and art dealer, collector, and interior designer. He founded his company in Antwerp in 1969, and in 1998, he and his family acquired an industrial site which they turned into a small green town that offers spaces for art and exhibits works by renowned artists such as Anish Kapoor, James Turrell, Marina Abramovic, Otto Boll, and Tatsuo Miyajima. Vervoordt further designed several spaces for, among others, Robert de Niro, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye West. Paolo Bertuzzi (1943-2022) was a fashion stylist from Bologna, Italy. He was the son of Enrichetta Bertuzzi, founder of Hettabretz, a noted Italian fashion company with customers such as the Rothschild family, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. Paolo Bertuzzi later took over his mother’s business and designed exclusive pieces, some of which were exhibited in the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. He was also an avid collector of antiques for more than 60 years. His collection includes both archaic and contemporary art, and he edited two important books about Asian art, Goa Made - An Archaeological Discovery, about a large-scale archaeological project carried out with the Italian and Indonesian governments, and Majapahit, Masterpieces from a Forgotten Kingdom.
Condition: Good condition commensurate with age showing expected old wear and traces of use, obvious losses, some chips, few encrustations, and natural fissures.

Dimensions: Height 110 cm

The Oxus Civilization or Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), recently dated to c. 2250-1700 BC, is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilization of Central Asia, previously dated to c. 2400-1900 BC, by Sandro Salvatori, in its urban phase or integration era. Though it may be called the “Oxus civilization”, apparently centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River) in Bactria, most of the BMAC’s urban sites are actually located in Margiana (modern Turkmenistan) on the Murghab river delta and the Kopet Dagh mountain range. There are a few later sites in northern Bactria (c. 1950–1450 BC), the territory of southern Uzbekistan, but they are mostly graveyards belonging to the BMAC-related Sapalli culture. A single BMAC site, known as Dashli, lies in southern Bactria, the territory of northern Afghanistan. Sites found further east, in southwestern Tajikistan, though contemporary with the main BMAC sites in Margiana, are only graveyards, with no urban developments associated with them. BMAC sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi when he was excavating in northern Afghanistan between 1969 and 1979. Sarianidi’s excavations revealed numerous monumental structures in many sites, fortified by impressive walls and gates. Reports on the BMAC were mostly confined to Soviet journals. A journalist from The New York Times wrote in 2001 that during the years of the Soviet Union, the findings were largely unknown to the West until Sarianidi’s work began to be translated in the 1990s.

The precise use of these objects found in graves at Gonur in Margiana, in the cenotaphs of Sibri near Mehrgarh (Pakistan) and at Tepe Hissar and Shahdad in eastern Iran, is still unknown: they must have been used for some specific task, because their functional end, as a rule is worn, and finally deposed in the graves after the funeral.

Literature comparison:
Compare a related ritual object with cylindrical shaft tapering then flaring towards the flat ends illustrated in M.-H. Pottier, Matériel Funéraire de la Bactriane Méridionale de l'Age du Bronze, Paris, 1984, pp. 16, pl. V, fig. 7, no. 31.

Auction result comparison:
Type: Related
Auction: Christie’s London, 2 July 2018, lot 40
Price: GBP 15,000 or approx. EUR 23,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A Bactrian stone idol, circa 3rd-2nd millennium B.C.
Expert remark: Compare the related form and note the larger size (138 cm).

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