NEW YORK – Christie’s New York is pleased to present Antiquities, taking place 17 October, 2023 at Rockefeller Plaza. The sale offers an impressive selection of works from ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Egyptian and the Near Eastern cultures, ranging in date from the 3rd millennium B.C. to the 7th century A.D. The sale is led by two Roman marbles from a West Coast Collector: an over-life-sized torso of Mercury and a figure of Asclepius, once in the famed collection of Count Karol Lanckoroński (1848-1933) of Vienna. These two marbles, last on the market in the 1970s, were on loan at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University for almost two decades. Additional highlights include one of the finest portraits known of Faustina Minor— a Roman Marble Portrait Head of the Empress Faustina Minor from the Antonine Period, and a large, decorative and ornately detailed Roman Marble Cinerary Urn, which was once part of the important and extensive collection of ancient sculpture assembled by Thomas Hope of London and The Deepdene, Surrey. This is a rare opportunity to acquire a large and decorative work from one of the United Kingdom’s foremost collections assembled during the Grand Tour era.

The sale further includes a selection of ancient engraved gems formerly in the Collection of Dr. Elie Borowski (1913-2003). Included in this group is an Archaic Greek gold and carnelian scarab swivel ring with an Amazon, a work that the scholar Sir John Boardman notes is “assured a place in any choice of the ‘top hundred’ of antiquity.”

Christie’s is also honored to present the Collection of Dr. Martha and Artemis Joukowsky. Martha, Professor of Old World Archaeology at Brown University, was perhaps best known for her excavation of the Great Temple at Petra in Jordan. Together with Artemis, who served as Chancellor of Brown from 1997-1998, the couple played an integral role in the university’s academic life. In recognition of their longtime commitment to the study of the ancient world, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World was established in their honor in 2004.