CIMRM Supplement - Tauroctony torso. Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA

A badly damaged tauroctony, now in the Getty Museum.

M. Vermaseren, Mithriaca III: The Mithraeum at Marino, p.1 n.2 describes this item as follows:

2) Fragment of a white marble statue (H. 0.31, W. 0.34, Th. 0.235) from Rome or a Roman workshop. Malibu (U.S.A.), J. Paul Getty Museum, Inv. no 76.AA.63. Upon a high pedestal is the group of Mithras as a bullslayer. The greater part of the bull except the head and the hindquarters is preserved. Mithras is kneeling on the animal; he wears a tunic, a girdle with the sheath of a dagger and trousers. The upper part of his body from the waist, his arms and his feet are missing. Part of the dagger is seen in the wound, where traces of red colour are preserved. The dog is leaping up at the wound; the scorpion is creeping to the bull's belly; the foremost part of the snake is visible on the base and next to the bull's hindlegs. Date: second century A.D. Published by Al. N. Oikonomides, A New Mithraic Tauroctony in The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 5, 1977, 85-90 with figures.

Oikonomides begins his description thus:

Central fragment from a monumental Roman sculpture, dated ca. the middle of the second century A.D. White Italian marble (Carrara?) and fine workmanship point towards the possibility that we are facing a work produced by one of the group of sculptors who had their workshops in the area of what can be called Metropolitan Rome. The lack, however, of an exact record of the place where the fragment was found leaves open the possibility that the sculpture may have been made in or near Rome but for a Mithraeum located in one of the provinces.
Height: 31.1 cm; width: 34.3 cm; depth: 23.5cm
Inventory: 76.AA.63, anonymous donation in memory of J. Paul Getty and David Rinne.¹

Note that the location of the scorpion is not in the usual place, attacking the bull's genitals.

Bibliography

Al. N. Oikonomides, "A New Mithraic Tauroctony in the J. Paul Getty Museum", The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, 5 (1977), pp. 85-90. Includes plates. JSTOR.
Getty website