Roman ideal sculptures: copies or originals?

With its assertion of Greek primacy, Hemingway's chapter on “Roman copies and adaptations of Greek sculpture” makes a tendentious beginning. Of the 25 works included here, some are rightly described as Roman copies of Greek originals ‒ indeed, in the case of the Eleusis relief, the 5th-c. BCE work reproduced by the Met's relief (cat. no. 8) actually survives. In other cases, like the Diadumenos (cat. no. 1), Harmodios (cat. no. 5), or Amazon (cat. no. 6),Footnote ⁶ the Greek model has been lost but is plausibly attested in ancient literature. But many other works included under this heading render popular statuary types that underwent so many reinterpretations over the centuries that no one model, let alone a Greek one, can be isolated. These include the seated Hercules (cat. no. 14), the nude Venus (cat. no. 15 and figs. 40, 41), the standing Hercules (cat. nos. 24 and 25), and the spectacular sleeping Eros (cat. no. 16), the possible Roman restoration and reuse of which cannot disguise the fact that it is a Hellenistic Greek bronze that may illustrate Roman taste in collecting but not Roman art.

Given the best Roman sculptors’ documented ability to work in a variety of styles, such works are better understood as Roman creations that drew freely upon the Greek aesthetic legacy, whether in archaic, classical, or baroque styles. The so-called Stephanos Athlete (cat. no. 19), the Hope Dionysos (cat. no. 21), the male youth (cat. no. 20), and the centaur (cat. no. 23) could easily have been Roman creations “in Greek style,” and there is no reason to think that Roman works were not copied. In fact, few scholars today endorse the Greek bronze original – Roman marble copy paradigm repeatedly invoked here. This reversion to outdated assumptions is troubling.Footnote ⁷ There is no evidence that the Romans used a pointing machine (50), prized exactitude in copying (14), or necessarily regarded the strut as a signifier of a copy (40).Footnote ⁸ Despite the nod to changing attitudes (35), the simplistic picture presented here obscures the complex relationship of Roman art to Greek and so fails to acknowledge Roman appropriation as a creative act worthy of study and interpretation, not to mention admiration.

H.'s catalog includes the Hope Dionysos (cat. no. 21), one of the department's most important acquisitions of recent times. Although acquired in 1990, it still lacks full publication. Long known to have been restored by Vincenzo Pacetti in Rome in the 1790s, the recent publication of Pacetti's journals ‒ not mentioned here ‒ provides a precise chronology and some details. The statue, which Pacetti calls “il gruppo di Bacco,” was bought by Henry Hope on a Grand Tour with his two brothers. Pacetti chronicles a series of studio visits ‒ sometimes over consecutive days ‒ of one or several brothers who appear to have been introduced by the abbot Marini (rewarded with 50 scudi by Pacetti after the deal closed).Footnote ⁹ On January 13, 1796, Hope offered 800 scudi for the statue; as this was the price he ultimately paid on March 21, it would at first appear that Hope was a poor negotiator, but in fact restoration mentioned by Pacetti on February 8 must have been incorporated into the price. The work was completed within five weeks, on March 14, and left Hope very satisfied. During this time Pacetti paid the scholar Ennio Quirino Visconti four scudi to write a description of the statue for Hope; although this has not been located, Visconti likely offered evidence for identifying the archaizing female used as a support as Spes, the Roman personification of Hope. Such evidence, of course, would have made the statue irresistible to the visiting gentlemen! Although the coincidence seems incredible, the poet Horace does associate hope with inebriation; hence the combination of their personifications is plausible, if rare.Footnote ¹⁰ In any event, Spes was a common subject of Roman archaistic statuary, and she is typically represented as she is here.Footnote ¹¹

Decorating the Roman interior

In the book's second chapter, “The decoration of house and villa,” Zanker devotes many pages (85–117) to the exquisite wall paintings from the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale and that of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase, both on the Bay of Naples and both destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. The finest ancient wall paintings in the United States and among the best in the world, they demonstrate the conceptual and technical brilliance often denied to Roman art. While it was the Fourth Style that inspired early modern artists like Raphael, the perspectival and illusionistic experiments of the Second Style (as at Boscoreale) underscore the Romans’ interest in spatial illusionism. Yet Z.'s lengthy discussion contains both surprising omissions and anachronistic value judgments. He never defines the term Second Style ‒ August Mau's pioneering categorization by styles is not mentioned ‒ and his opinion that the decoration of the famous cubiculum (Room M, reconstructed at the museum) “can be oppressive” (98) was surely not shared by the villa's owner.

Z. also does not question the old attribution to Synistor, which has been contested by Bettina Bergmann and others,Footnote ¹² while favoring the now-refuted view that the window was cut into the back wall after the room was finished (97).Footnote ¹³ He might have considered the provocative proposal by Christopher Lightfoot, who argues that the blown-glass bowl painted on the back wall forces a radical revision of the traditional date of 50–40 BCE because blown glass was a technological innovation made almost a century later.Footnote ¹⁴ Even if the current volume is not the place for lengthy disputation, it is odd to find no mention of this bombshell, or of other important arguments by a Met curator who is himself one of the contributors in Roman Art.

Issues of dating and agency also arise with the Boscotrecase paintings, the flat, monochromatic walls of which epitomize Mau's Third Style. Z. associates the Third Style with the emperor Augustus (“artists who were employed by the imperial family,” 103), seeing it as part of his new visual language of restrained classicism. While this is tantalizing, as yet there is no sure evidence that the emperor had his own living spaces decorated in the Third Style. Boscotrecase's standout paintings are the two mythological images of Polyphemus and Galatea and of Perseus and Andromeda that once anchored the eponymous Mythological Room (cat. nos. 34 and 35), which Z. ascribes to different artists based on their compositional and stylistic differences. To my eye, however, it is their similarities ‒ a large vertical feature in the center, the lightly scumbled brushwork, the hazy color effects dominated by gray and green ‒ that stand out, suggesting variations on a theme by the same artist. Much as Michelangelo self-corrected while executing the Sistine Chapel ceiling, this painter seems to have recognized the shortcomings of the numerous small figures in the Perseus/Andromeda scene and corrected this in its pendant. In any event, the works’ considerable losses and modern infill make conclusive statements difficult.

Longtime visitors to the Met will remember that the Boscoreale cubiculum was once furnished with an impressive couch (klinē) and footstool (cat. no. 47 and page 97). As the couch originally decorated a much later villa owned by the 2nd-c. emperor Lucius Verus, it has been removed for display at the center of another gallery. In a fascinating discussion, Z. traces its modern assemblage from multiple sources and its transformation from a throne made for the collector Evan Gorga to its present, correct incarnation as a couch. The accompanying footstool is likewise an assemblage. That the marble table (cat. no. 47, stone not identified but probably pavonazzetto) is also a composite underscores the need to approach such objects with caution. Few authentic pieces of furniture survive ‒ after all, many were of wood or other organic materials ‒ making them a prime mark for unscrupulous dealers of the late 19th and early 20th c., when these works were acquired.

The puteal or wellhead (cat. no. 46), a major acquisition of 2019, is celebrated with three full-page photographs. When excavated at Ostia in the late 18th c. it was much admired, but subsequently disappeared from view.Footnote ¹⁵ Its decoration pairs two Greek myths that, appropriately for the object's function, involve water: Hylas and the nymphs, and Narcissus. Narcissus's image in the water shows him with long tresses floating in the stream; as this is a reflection one wonders how his “real” head was rendered, but it, along with the upper third of the puteal and the head of Hylas, have been restored. Here, as frequently in the volume, restorations go unacknowledged, even though they can substantially alter a work's appearance and interpretation.

To the museum's credit, the modern plaster restorations made to the severely damaged face and body of a statue depicting an old woman (cat. no. 59) have been removed.Footnote ¹⁶ One of the Met's most famous marbles, the sculpture is included in many studies of Greek Hellenistic art. Although no other copies are known, Z. and many others have taken it to be a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original;Footnote ¹⁷ among his arguments is a preference for the oblique view, “characteristic of Roman copies made in the imperial period” (158), a statement contradicted by many works with known findspots: the Polycleitan-inspired Mars and Mercury lining the Canopic basin at Hadrian's Villa, for example, face the viewer straight on.Footnote ¹⁸

Scholars have been perplexed by the old woman's various contradictions: between an ugly subject and its virtuoso carving in fine marble; between a peasant's decrepit physique and her costly dress and sandals. Past interpretations, none especially convincing, imagine her as a “fallen woman,” someone punished cruelly by fate, or a pious countrywoman bearing food offerings to a Dionysiac festival. However, considering the statue in its Roman context ‒ an earlier publication describes the findspot as RomeFootnote ¹⁹ ‒ opens up other possibilities. Might the subject be a female farmhand (vilica) who ekes out a living provisioning the local villa owner with fresh foodstuffs (and wears the cast-off clothing of the villa's mistress)? Such personages are mentioned by Cato, Juvenal, and others as the purveyors of hens, eggs, and fruit.Footnote ²⁰ An interpretation along these lines assumes an analogy with the emaciated fisherman (cat. no. 60), whose daily catch will likely find its way to a wealthy table. Here the disparity between the prized foodstuff and the disdained provider ‒ fishermen were at the bottom of the social scale ‒ is even more pronounced. Countryfolk like the old woman and the fisherman populated many Roman landscape paintings (see that from Boscotrecase illustrated in figs. 64a and b); they embodied rusticity and so were appropriate for Roman villa displays.

An archaizing relief depicting Hermes (cat. no. 68) was acquired from the art market in 1991 and has no known provenance. Although resembling some reliefs of similar subject matter, it is peculiar in that its mannered right hand is missing a thumb, and for its oddly angled head. A relief in the Villa Albani, noted by Z. as “identical to our fragment down to the smallest detail,” is rather different in every aspect except its pose.Footnote ²¹

The rest of the chapter, on works in other media connected to the house, has surprising absences. One would expect to find discussion of the carved tondi (oscilla), such as Met 13.229.6, that typically hung in domestic colonnades, not to mention the many attractive and domestically scaled statuettes that fill two large cases in the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court. There are no examples of the Met's Arretine ware, the delicate designs of which beautified many a domestic table. By contrast, the inclusion here of a porphyry vessel (cat. no. 51), two silver dish handles (cat. nos. 56 and 57), and a panther statuette with niello inlay (cat. no. 58), instead of later in “Luxury arts,” finds little justification, just as the antefixes (cat. nos. 41 and 42) would seem more at home in “Architectural elements.”

In the next chapter, on “Luxury arts,” Lightfoot struggles to define luxury, a word that had strong moral connotations for early Romans. Perhaps, like the once-commonplace “minor arts,” the label should be retired in favor of “works in precious material” or some equivalent. The chapter includes glass, gems, cameos, silver, and jewelry, some belonging to early collectors like J. Pierpont Morgan and Edward C. Moore, a major designer at Tiffany & Co., and among the earliest gifts to the Met's fledging Department of Classical Art. The entries for works of glass (especially cat. nos. 71, 78–82, 97–100) focus concisely on their technological inventions and give life to this under-appreciated medium. Like the comparative pieces shown in figs. 86 and 87, the painted mummy shroud (cat. no. 94) demonstrates how jewels ‒ often in multiples ‒ adorned the female wearer.

Honoring the dead

From altars to sarcophagi, the Met has a strong collection of funerary monuments that chronicle the widespread shift from cremation to inhumation in the early 2nd c. CE. Z.'s chapter on “Tombs and funerary monuments” presents a diverse selection introduced by a succinct essay. Glass vessels like cat. no. 127 would have been an economical, unisex repository, while the carved urn shaped like a wool basket (cat. no. 128), once belonging to Henry Hope, must have held a woman's remains. The cinerary chest with lid (cat. no. 129) is admittedly somewhat crude in its carving, but the bird parents feeding their young in the pedimental scene makes a sweet analogy to the feasting scene of the deceased and his wife below. Here the accompanying inscription is neither transcribed nor translated, whereas that of the altar of Cominia Tyche (cat. no. 131) receives such attention.

The Dionysiac sarcophagus purchased from Badminton House in 1955 (cat. no. 137) deservedly gets multiple illustrations in these pages and later as figs. 162 and 163. (The photo on 279, like several others, has no ground line and little cast shadow, with the result that the sarcophagus looks like a two-dimensional cutout.) Acquired in Rome around 1726 by Henry Somerset, 3rd Duke of Beaufort, on his Grand Tour, it was mounted back in England on a marble base designed by William Kent, altogether making an exquisite neoclassical ensemble. Flattered as I am to have my own article on some technical aspects of the chest's design and carving cited by Z., my argument that the sarcophagus was recut from an entablature block has since been disproved by Dorothy Abramitis and John Herrmann, who demonstrate that the partly sawn back and the fully sawn bottom result from cutting the initial block so as to extract an L-shaped piece for the lid.Footnote ²² Here the apparent lack of awareness of new research conducted by the Met's own staff reduces confidence that the scholarship is up to date. Just as concerning, there is little engagement here or elsewhere with the technical aspects of production. There is no mention, for example, of recent archaeological discoveries that shed light on the sarcophagus trade, which was closely associated with particular marble quarries, nor do many of the works seem to have been tested scientifically for stone provenance. In addition, the catalog's use of older generic terms such as “rosso antico” (cat. no. 23) does not reflect current developments in marble studies, which now enable red stone originating in Greece (marmor Taenarium) to be distinguished from those of Asia Minor (e.g., marmor iassense).

Portraiture

Z.'s chapter on “Imperial and private portraits” builds upon his recent major catalog of the Met's superb collection.Footnote ²³ The 28 works included here (of more than 100 addressed in that publication) are all three-dimensional images in marble or bronze, relegating portraits on gems (as in cat. nos. 75, 89), on coins (cat. no. 95), in paint (fig. 86) and in other materials to the sidelines. Women are outnumbered nearly four to one by men, and there is only one child, notwithstanding the Met's possession of such fine works as the 1st-c. CE bronze bust of a boy (66.11.5) and the marble boy in the guise of Bacchus (14.105.1).Footnote ²⁴

Z. rightly devotes considerable attention to two of the collection's prized works, both of bronze. The statue of a boy (cat. no. 161) conveys the sitter's mood and physiognomy with extraordinary skill. Said to be from Rhodes, the youth has the face of a young adolescent but the poise and thoughtful demeanor of someone more mature. Z. suggests that the striped pattern of his voluminous himation was made by weaving, not folding; if so, one wonders if the bands between the raised stripes could have been inlaid with another metal of contrasting color. His proposal that the figure originally held a now-missing box of incense in the left hand seems unlikely, since the fingers would have had to curl to grip it. Perhaps he held a patera in his left hand and a small jug with the delicately posed fingers of his right, although the lack of a veil would seem to preclude participation in a sacrifice. Or was he instead an aspiring writer holding a pen and wax tablet?

The second work, the striking Trebonianus Gallus (cat. no. 157), represents the finale of the classical male nude after a millennium in the artistic limelight. Z. rejects the traditional association of the work with a findspot near the Lateran in Rome, a recent view advocated by Elizabeth Marlowe, who is not credited.Footnote ²⁵ The inclusion of a drawing showing modern restoration on the statue in grayscale is welcome, although various other works discussed in the volume would benefit from similar treatment, among them the already-mentioned puteal and the colossal head of Constantine (cat. no. 158): to see the nose, mouth, chin, and ears of the latter, as well as part of the left side of the head, clearly indicated in gray would make a shocking exposé of the extent of its modern interventions.

While any catalog of highlights must be selective, it is a shame that Roman Art includes no portraits on gold glass (e.g., the Met's Gennadios, 26.258); no Palmyrene reliefs, which translated Roman forms into a Syrian stylistic idiom; no Hadrianic-era portraits, to illustrate the innovative practice of carving the irises of the eyes (e.g., the Met's marble bust of a boy, 18.145.11, or the head of a young man, 15.145). As so many of the portraits discussed are heads detached from their bodies, it would have been instructive to include both a life-size togate male (04.15) and a draped female (03.12.10a).

In view of these important omissions, the selection of objects that are included warrants scrutiny. As Rome's first emperor, Augustus obviously deserves recognition, although a fragmentary colossal portrait (cat. no. 150) is an odd choice as it is posthumous and lacks the chin, nose, and entire back; moreover, the argument that it was recut from a portrait of Caligula is impossible to assess without profile views. The Met's ivory miniature (23.160.78) of the emperor in his Prima Porta typology would have been a better choice. Meanwhile, three portraits (cat. nos. 151–53), even if of different materials and scales, seem excessive for Caligula. The authenticity of cat. no. 153, a well-preserved marble bust would seem to be affirmed by its discovery with a portrait of Caligula now in Worcester, Massachusetts (not Worcester, England, as stated). In 1989, Dietrich Boschung pronounced the scalloped lower edge of the bust to be original, although its unusual form goes unremarked here.Footnote ²⁶ The other two portraits are bronze miniatures, reflecting the survival of images that presumably belonged to private persons or family members who protected them after the emperor's death. Z.'s proposal that cat. no. 151, which preserves its inlaid eyes although they have been discolored by the bronze, was “fished out of the Tiber River” is unconvincing. Images of Caligula were apparently thrown in the Tiber by the angry mob after his assassination, but presumably these were large-scale public statues, not small works like the Met's.

Addressing the female portraits, Z.'s comment about their “ever-changing” hairstyles seems to ignore the fact that men, too, adopted current grooming fads and often emulated the emperor and his family. The German word “toupet,” used to describe the towering mound of hair worn by many women from the Flavian through Hadrianic eras, might better have been translated as “beehive,” “turban,” or “helmet,” depending upon the details. It would have been helpful to explain that these complicated constructions typically supplemented the sitter's own locks with extensions of hair or wool that were glued, woven, pinned, or sewn into the coiffure.Footnote ²⁷

Leisure, architecture

The penultimate chapter (“Gladiatorial games, sports, and the military”), by Z., is devoted to a miscellany of objects associated with the military and what might have been called “Leisure,” including gladiatorial games, sports, and the hunt. All that is missing is sex, which could have been shown by a small cameo glass fragment (81.10.349). With the exception of a painted glass beaker (cat. no. 176) and a gem (cat. no. 183), the works are of dismal artistic quality. The final chapter (“Architectural elements”), also by Z., rightly highlights the exciting discovery by Maxwell Anderson that anonymous molding fragments donated by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1906 actually belonged to Domitian's massive palace on the Palatine. Alas, the supporting evidence and argument have never been fully published.

A selective history

The book concludes with an essay by the longtime curator Joan Mertens that explores the modern history of selected works. Unfortunately, this is the most disappointing section of the volume. Like all major collections, the Met possesses many works once owned by important antiquarians such as Athanasius Kircher, Fulvio Orsini, and Francesco Ficoroni, and connoisseurs such as the Earl of Arundel and Prince Stanislas Poniatowski. Several can be traced as far back as the Renaissance, when the “rediscovery” of Antiquity made art virtually synonymous with ancient sculpture found at Rome. M. traces the appreciation of Roman art through the 18th c. ‒ when classical statuary set off a collecting frenzy among European travelers ‒ and subsequent collapse of the market during the Napoleonic Wars and the shift in taste with the arrival of the Elgin Marbles in London in 1805. A number of the Met's finest pieces were Grand Tour acquisitions: the Lansdowne Amazon, the Hope Dionysos, and the Badminton sarcophagus all sojourned for centuries in Britain before coming to New York.

But modern history apparently ends in the late 19th c., when M. abruptly switches gears to discuss the Met's neoclassical architecture as derivative from ancient Roman buildings (389). There is no mention of the museum's active collecting of the early decades of the 20th c., when it employed John Marshall in Rome as its exclusive purchasing agent.Footnote ²⁸ To this day, the correspondence between Marshall and the museum remains unpublished, although Z.'s frequent mention of provenance in his 2016 portrait catalog suggests that he had some access.Footnote ²⁹ Charting Marshall's annual purchases for the Met and comparing them to the acquisitions by competing institutions (for example, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore) might help clarify their original context and function. It might also help shed light on some works with peculiar published histories: a magnificent seated Hercules (cat. no. 14) for example, acquired in Rome through Marshall in 1911, is said to have been made in Rome but sent at some point to Valladolid, Spain. As no owner in Valladolid is named, one wonders if perhaps the story is an invention intended to disguise its true provenance: could it come from one of the many sanctuaries of Hercules (like Alba Fucens) founded in Italy in the Republican period and so have had a cultic function?

Strangely, the concerns about provenance that raise alarm bells in the Met's legal department do not seem to have arisen with regard to works included in this volume. No fewer than 43 objects featured cannot be documented before 1970, the date of the UNESCO resolution banning the acquisition of undocumented works; at least one other is a loan from a private collection that likewise lacks provenance. The museum's buying, accepting, and promoting such works, without even acknowledging the issue in this context, might be criticized for encouraging looting and for exposing the museum to forgeries, the occupational hazards of collecting unexcavated and unprovenanced works. Regrettably, the Met's policies put it at odds with the recommendations and practices of many US museums, learned societies like the Archaeological Institute of America, and governmental bodies devoted to cultural heritage.Footnote ³⁰

In conclusion, Roman Art falls short as an informed, up-to-date, or even stimulating presentation of the Met's Roman collection. With the specter of Greece hovering throughout, Roman art is not fully acknowledged as the powerful and creative force it was, introducing such important elements as portraiture, narrative, and spatial illusionism to Western art. While the individual contributors are distinguished scholars, the volume's mistakes, omissions, and questionable premises render it neither a suitable introductory text nor an especially useful contribution. The premier collection of Roman art in America ‒ one that has brought joy and inspiration to millions of viewers ‒ deserves better.