Rare early 19th century Grand Tour Italian patinated bronze Discophorus. Representing an idealised athlete carrying a disc: a young, muscular, solidly-built athlete in a moment of thought before throwing a discus. The original, now lost, is believed to be by the Greek sculptor Naucydes in the 4th century BC. Two Roman marble copies remain from the 1st�2nd century AD in the Louvre and the Pio-Clementino Museum in the Vatican in Rome. Early, cast in sections, with a lovely deep dark brown patina, possibly by Giuseppe Boschi (1783-1824). Presented on a beautiful pietra dura opus sectile base after a design at Hadrian''s Villa in Tivoli. Italy, probably Rome circa 1800.Based in London, we are dealers in fine decorative antiques from the 18th and 19th centuries. We specialise in this era of enlightenment, neoclassicism and the Grand Tour, with its far reaching influence on style and taste in Britain, Continental Europe and beyond: elegance in the age of Napoleon. Our extensive stock...