Provenance

The sculpture was previously owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford; the proceeds from its sale were to benefit the museum's European Paintings and Sculpture Purchase Fund. The museum acquired the piece in 1949 as a gift of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. It was part of the important Joseph Brummer collection, sold at auction by Parke-Bernet (now Sotheby's) on May 11-14, 1949. The sculpture has been featured in two special exhibitions, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, organized by the Walters Art Gallery in the spring of 1947, and Art of the Late Antique from American Collections at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, in the winter of 1969. Although it had long been claimed that the sculpture comes from Ravenna, the German scholar H. P. Laubscher recognized it, with restored head, arms, legs, and base, in a photograph that was taken by Romualdo Moscioni in Rome in the late 19th-early 20th century.
Christie's sale 2174, June 3, 2009, lot 196.