AFA 20th Anniversary

20th Anniversary 98 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Fig. 4: Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, 1833–34. Oil on canvas, 18⅛ x 153⁄16 in. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Purchase funded by the Brown Foundation Accessions Endowment Fund. Aldridge dating from 1764. The English pair, purchased for $187,500, was sold to benefit the Central Synagogue, London. In May, the J. Paul Getty Museum purchased a group of seventeen ancient engraved gems from the collection of Roman art dealer Giorgio Sangiorgi (1886–1965). (The Getty has made it clear that the great majority of the Sangiorgi gems were acquired before World War II and were in no way Holocaust loot.) The group acquired by the Getty includes Greek gems of the Minoan, Archaic and Classical periods, as well as Etruscan and Roman gems, some of which are in their original gold rings. According to Timothy Potts, director of the museum, the acquisition “brings into the Getty’s collection some of the greatest and most famous of all classical gems, most notably the portraits of Antinous and Demosthenes.” The gem portraying Antinous, the young lover of the Emperor Hadrian (ruled 117– 138 AD), was engraved on an unusually large black chalcedony stone. A frontal portrait of Demosthenes, the 4th century BC Greek orator, is signed by the gem engraver Dioskourides, the court gem engraver to the Emperor Augustus (ruled 27 BC– AD 14), regarded as one of the greatest gem engravers of Roman times. In the past year, the Getty also purchased a rare and well preserved painting, Virgin and Child with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist , by Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), and a pair of rare marble sculptures, The Annunciation (about 1333–34), by Giovanni di Balduccio (ca. 1290–1339). The museum also