CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN BRONZE GODDESS
CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.
Perhaps depicting Juno, shown envelloped in her tunic and pallium, the garments nearly obscuring the form of her body but for her breasts and her left leg, which is pulled back and bent at the knee, the tunic with V-shaped folds at the neckline, a long overfold, and deep vertical folds below, the pallium draped over the back of her head as a veil and covering her back as a cape, one end falling down her left leg, the other flowing across her body in a roll and over her left arm, wearing a crescentic diadem in her center-parted hair, her eyes articulated
11 1/8 in. (28.3 cm.) high

Provenance

de Sanctis Mangelli Collection, Rome; L. Pollak, Oggetti D'Arte Antichi, Egiziani, Etruschi, Greci e Romani, Rome, 26-28 March 1923, lot 191.
Ambassador Coe, France.
with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, 1988 (Art of the Ancient World, vol. V, part 1, no. 14).

Literature

S. Reinach, Répertoire de la Statuaire Grecque et Romaine, Paris, 1924, p. 489, no. 9.
C.C. Vermeule and J.M. Eisenberg, Catalogue of the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Bronzes in the Collection of John Kluge, New York and Boston, 1992, no. 88-05.

Special notice

This lot is offered without reserve.

Lot Essay

Vermeule and Eisenberg (op. cit.) suggest that this bronze may have been part of a Capitoline Triad, which would have included a standing Minerva and an enthroned Jupiter. If, on the other hand, this figure was not intended to be an Olympian, the possibility exists that she was fashioned as a personification. In the absence of more specific attributes, a number of such personifications are possible, including Clementia Augusta, Aeternitas, Pax, Felicitas, Libertas, Aequitas, and Laetitia Publica (see p. 337 in Kozloff and Mitten, The Gods Delight, The Human Figure in Classical Bronze).

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