Plain column shaft on composite base

Plain column shaft carved in a streaked “Bigio antico” marble, partially restored with two drums cut in modern times. It is worked in a quality of marble of rather homogeneous dark hue, with large black pebbles (h. of lower drum 90 cm, h. of upper drum 84 cm). The upper part of the column is missing: the original height equalled ca. 3 m. On the top part there is a repair patch of roughly square shape, measuring ca 25 cm in width.

The lower end of the shaft, preserved, is carved with a cavetto molding and a flat fillet (h. 2,7 cm, projecting 1.5 cm). In the absence of data allowing to locate our piece in a precise building context, it is all the same difficult to recognize its chronological setting, also because this kind of marble was widely employed throughout antiquity.

The shaft has been placed above an ancient, not pertaining composite base in white marble (h. 20 cm) with plinth; it has the surface slightly chipped and fractured. The base is characterized by the presence of the plinth over which rests the lower torus (h. 3 cm) that, like the upper one, still retains an expanded profile (h. 2.5 cm); the two tori are separated by two scotiae which, in turn, are divided by an astragal and framed by fillets (h. 0.5). Given such features, the base can be chronologically set between the end of the II and the III century AD.