Plain column shaft

Plain column shaft, fully preserved and carved in a single block of streaked “Bigio antico” marble with a very pale hue of colour. Its surface has probably been repolished and its ends have been reworked; the shaft has thin restored fractures, a small circular repair patch (diam. 1.5 cm) and another oval larger patch (h. 10.5 cm, largh. 24 cm), made of the same kind of marble but with a darker shade. The upper end is carved with an astragal (h. 2.5 cm, projecting 1 cm), a flat fillet (h. 0.8 cm) and a thin cavetto (h. 0.5 cm, projecting 0.4 cm). The bottom end is cut with a cavetto and a flat fillet (h. 2.5 cm, projecting 0.8 cm). The shaft has been placed over a modern, not pertaining base.

It is difficult to set our piece in a precise chronological frame, since “Bigio antico” marble was widely employed throughout antiquity and was very often used, probably because of its low cost, in private contexts for both revetment panels and medium-scale columns.