Bidspirit auction | Antique marble sculpture, Boy with

Antique marble sculpture, Boy with Thorn, based on Greco-Roman Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a boy withdrawing a thorn from the sole of his foot, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. 40cm height x 21cm x 28cm depth. Of the original: It is said that Benjamin of Tudela, when he saw it outside the Lateran Palace in the 1160's, identified it as Absalom, who ”was without blemish from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.” In the Early Renaissance, it was celebrated via being one of the first Roman sculptures to be copied.  There are copies in bronze and marble. In Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice, Gustav von Aschenbach compares Tadzio's beauty to the Spinario (”Spinario” being another known name for ”The Boy with Thorn”).