Albani lion

The Albani lion is a 1st-century Roman green basalt lion statue with a yellow marble sphere under one paw, in the Albani Collection in the Denon Wing of the Louvre (inventory number Ma 1355) in Paris, France.

The Albani lion is possibly a reproduction of an earlier Greek bronze statue, as basalt was used in the 1st century AD for reproductions of Greek bronzes.

Literature

 * Richard Delbrueck: Antike Porphyrwerke, Berlin/Leipzig 1932 (Studien zur spätantiken Kunstgeschichte 6), page 60 (in German, referenced on Google Books and uni-koeln.de)