An Amazon and Two Greek Warriors

Roman art

This sculpture group portrays a fight between an Amazon, wearing a short chlamys that reveals her right breast and a crested helmet, and two men. The men, overwhelmed by the powerful force of the warrior’s horse, are on the ground.

Unearthed, probably, in 1610 in Nero’s villa at Anzio, it was already documented in Palazzo Borghese di Borgo in 1613. It was documented at the Villa, displayed in enclosure two in the area of the holm oak wood, in 1650. A second group of similar subject was found at the same imperial site in 1932. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, it would have been a pendant to the Borghese group.

The numerous studies on the group agree that it is a copy from the Antonine age of a Hellenistic archetype from the area of Pergamon.

Object details

Commentary

This sculpture group was, probably, found in 1610 during the excavation of Nero’s villa at Anzio (Moreno 1975-1976, pp. 126–127, pl. XX, fig. 1). Giovanni Demisiani reports the discovery in a treatise dedicated to Scipione Borghese, Discorso sopra quattro statue dell'Ill.mo Sig.r Cardinale Borghese, interpreting the figures as Penthesilea fighting the Greeks Lernos and Podarkes (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Fondo Borghese II, s.d., 468, fol. 43–66). De Lachenal identified the group in the inventories of the Della Porta family, dated about 1607, in which it is described as ‘un cauallo ed una femina sopra: di una amanzona con un morto sotto al cauallo. alt. p. 7 1/2’ (‘a horse ridden by a woman; an Amazon with a dead man under the horse. P. 7 1/2 high’; Appendice, V a, n. 233) and ‘Cavallo con femina amazzone ed uno sotto il cavallo, p. 7 1/4’ (‘Horse with female Amazon and a male under the horse’; Appendice , V b, no. 196). According to the author, it is also listed in the inventory of antiquities that Pope Paul V had drawn up in 1610 upon the death of his brother Giovambattista Borghese, at number 67: ‘Tomiri Regina de’ Massagati a cavallo con il Tiranno sotto’ (‘Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae on horseback with the Tyrant below’; De Lachenal 1982, pp. 67–68).

In 1613, it is mentioned in a poem by Scipione Francucci as on view in Palazzo Borghese di Borgo (folio 124v-126r, strofe 431–437) and, in 1650, Manilli wrote that it was in enclosure two of the Villa near the holm oak wood, describing it as ‘una Amazone, in atto di combattere; & hà sotto ‘l corpo del cavallo un Soldato; e trà le zampe dinanzi un altro, che le stà chiedendo mercede’ (‘An Amazon in battle, and a soldier under the body of the horse and another one between the front legs, begging for mercy’; p. 123). Montelatici specified that it was located between the stables and the barn (1700, p. 66).

In 1827, it is described as a ‘Gruppo di Camilla’ (‘Camilla Group’), coming from the lake enclosure, in a letter from Minister Evasio Gozzani to Prince Camillo Borghese listing the works that were to be brought inside the Villa after it was stripped by the sale to Napoleon. It was restored by the sculptor Antonio D’Este (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Archivio Borghese, b. 7457: Moreno, Sforzini 1987, p. 354). In 1832, it was documented in the Villa in the middle of Room II by Nibby, who described it as a ‘combattimento di Antiope, che altri chiamano Ippolita l’amazone contro Ercole e Teseo, che andarono all’assalto di Temiscira sul Termodonte’ (‘battle of Antiope, who others call Hippolyta the Amazon against Hercules and Theseus, who then went on to attack Themiscyra on the Thermodon’; p. 66). The sculpture was then moved to Room XIV – known as the Loggia di Lanfranco – where it was in 1893 (Venturi, p. 49) and, finally, to its current location, in the passageway between Room XV and Room XVI, when it returned to the museum after the exhibition La Gloria dei vinti. Pergamo. Atene. Roma, held in 2014 at the Museo Nazionale Romano a Palazzo Altemps (Coarelli 2014).

The group depicts a battle between an Amazon on horseback and two fallen warriors. The woman, who is turned to the left, is wearing a short chlamys that reveals her right breast. She wears a crested helmet, from beneath which escape thick curls that come down over her neck. Her right arm is bent backward, and she holds a partially conserved weapon in her right hand. Her left arm is bent in front of her body, and she would have held another object, now lost, in her left hand. Mimicking the swift movement of the Amazon, the bridled horse is rearing up with its front hooves raised. Below them, a male figure supports himself on the ground with his knee and right hand, balanced by his extended left leg. He is wearing a mantle fastened at the neck that comes down over his right shoulder. He also wears a crested helmet. His left arm is held out in a gesture of defence, and he must have held an object, probably a shield, now lost, in his left hand. He holds sword in his right hand, all that survives of which is the hilt, which we can see between his fingers. The second man, on the ground under the horse’s belly, is nude except for a helmet. He is also holding a sword hilt in his hand.

The sculpture shares strong similarities with a group unearthed in 1932 at the same imperial site at Anzio and now in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, portraying an Amazon on horseback with a Galatian who has fallen to the ground (De Lachenal 1979, pp. 162–164, no. 111). According to Coarelli, the two groups would have been meant to be symmetrically displayed and are decorative Roman copies of Hellenistic archetypes from the area of Pergamon. In particular, building on a theory previously advanced by Palma (1981, p. 74, no. 15; 1984, pp. 772–782), Coarelli argues that it could have been inspired by the Lesser Dedication commissioned by Attalos I for the Acropolis in Athens. Although heavily restored, it seems likely that the scholar is correct in dating the group to the middle of the second century CE.

Giulia Ciccarello