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Two Roman Portrait-Busts in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
Fig. I, on plate v, represents a female bust, acquired in 1888 at Hoffmann's sale in Paris and published in Arndt-Bruckmann, Griechische und römische Porträts, pl. 565, from which our illustration is reproduced. The height of the bust is cm. 46, or, including the modern foot, cm. 61. It is in excellent preservation; even the tip of the nose is original, and intact save for a little break on the top. The surface is slightly weathered, and is covered here and there with calcareous deposit; but some parts have still the fine porcelain-like surface which sculptors of the second and third centuries A.D. knew how to give to their marble by polishing. The person represented is a young woman, clad in a tunic and with a mantle thrown over her shoulders. The expression is weary, too melancholy and despondent for one so young, perhaps also a little haughty with the prominent upper lip. The features are delicate and noble. The head is quietly turned towards the left shoulder. The hair is separately carved and loosely added. Such wigs in stone appear frequently in portraits of the end of the second and the beginning of the third centuries A.D., but in earlier times we know at present of only one example, an interesting Hellenistic portrait from Pergamon in Berlin. The Glyptothek possesses also a female portrait of the beginning of the third century with removable wig, in the small head no. 733 (fig. 2, plate VI). A few years ago the French scholar Gauckler attempted to give a profound explanation of this ‘trépanation en effigie,’ his idea being that it owed its origin to a religious ceremony: that when the bust was made, it was desired to consecrate it by pouring holy oil into the hollow under the hair.
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- Copyright © Frederik Poulsen1916. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
page 47 note 2 Catalogue no. 725, Billedtavler, lx.
page 47 note 3 Hekler, Bildniskunst der Griechen und Römer, pl. 75; but cf. also the heads in Boston, Dutilh, , Journ. internat. d'Arch. numismatique, iii (1900), p. 313 and plates 15–16.Google Scholar
page 47 note 4 Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres (1910), p. 403. [Since the present article was in type the whole question of capita desecta and marble coiffures has been discussed by J. R. Crawford (in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. i), who also rejects Gauckler's theory, and offers various technical explanations.—EDD.]
page 48 note 1 Gauckler, op. cit. p. 410, pl. 8.
page 48 note 2 Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopädie, s.v. Haartracht (Steininger).
page 48 note 3 Commodus, who was first acclaimed imperator in 176, only becomes Augustus in 180 on the death of his father.
page 49 note 1 Bernoulli, Röm. Ikonogr. ii,, 3, pl. xviii, and p. 42; Hekler, Bildniskunst der Griechen und Römer, pl. 288b.
page 49 note 2 Other portraits in Bernoulli, op. cit. plates xv–xvii, and Von Sacken, Die antiken Skulpturen in Wien, pl. 29.
page 49 note 3 Helbig, Führer, i, p. 454, n. 52.
page 49 note 4 The narrow, specially treated edge of the hair on the forehead and temples in the Capitoline portrait is reproduced on coins of Iulia Domna as empress-dowager, but is there combined with a flatter treatment of the hair on the neck. The treatment of the hair in the Capitoline bust is thus transitional, from about the time when Caracalla came to the throne. See Steininger, loc. cit.
page 49 note 5 Max. Ahrem, Das Weib in der antiken Kunst, p. 306, fig. 290.
page 49 note 6 Küthmann, Katalog, n. 38.
page 49 note 7 The head of the Capitoline type on statues (Museo Torlonia, pl. 72, n. 289) is, I dare say, like the bust (M.T. pl. 146, n. 567), a modern forgery. We have perhaps a replica, with the same method of dressing the hair as the bust of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, in the Vatican head, Amelung: Vatik. Katalog i, pl. 77, n. 601 (p. 716). There is a female head with exactly the same dressing of the hair at Toulouse, Espérandieu: Recueil général des Basreliefs de la Gaule ii, p. 78, n. 979.
page 50 note 1 Iulius Capitolinus (Pertinax, ch. 13 and 15).
page 50 note 2 Billedtavler, lx, 717; Arndt-Bruckmann, Porträts, plates 767, 768; Hekler, Bildniskunst, pl. 287.
page 50 note 3 Herodian i, 8, 3–4; Aelius Lampridius, Commodus, ch. 4.
page 50 note 4 It may be observed that Faustina the younger and Lucilla can now be safely identified: the descriptions of the busts in the Glyptothek catalogue are wrong. See on this point Delbrück, Antike Porträts, text to pl. 47: cf. Arch. Jahrb. xxviii (1913), p. 301, fig. 9. The convincing ground of identification is given by the portrait-statue of the younger Faustina at Olympia (Olympia, iii, pl. lxviii, 1; lxix. 5).
page 51 note 1 Billedtavler, lix, 710–711; Arndt-Bruckmann, Porträit, 759.
page 51 note 2 Billedtavler, lxiii, 753, 14; Tillaeg (supplement) til Billedtavler, xii, 732b.
page 51 note 3 Réville, J., La religion à Rome sous les Sevére Paris, 1885), p. 190 ffGoogle Scholar.
page 51 note 4 An exception is e.g. the ailing and intellectua young woman of the period of the Severi; Hekler, Bildniskunst, pl. 303; Arndt-Bruckmann, 570; and a lady with soft and amiable expression of the time of Marcus Aurelius; Amelung: Vatik. Katalog i, pl. 8, n. 55 (p. 75).
page 52 note 1 Billedtavler, lxv.
page 52 note 2 ibid, lxlii, 744.
page 52 note 3 ibid, lxv, 768.
page 53 note 1 Bernoulli, Römische Ikonographie, ii, 3, coin plate vi. 16.
page 53 note 2 Bernoulli, op. cit. coin plate v, 1–2, and pp. 160 and 187.
page 53 note 3 Richter, Gisela M. A., Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes (New York, 1915), p. 154Google Scholar; R. Delbrück, Bildnisse römiscber Kaiser, plates 34–35
page 53 note 4 Indistinctly reproduced in Hekler's Bildniskunst der Griechen und Römer (pl. 294b). For the bibliography see Helbig, Führer (3rd ed.), 673.
page 55 note 1 Historia Augusta, ch. 6.