Bust of a Male Figure

Roman art

This small bust in patinated bronze portrays a nude, beardless male figure. His head is tipped and leaning forward, turned towards the left. His eyes have spaces where the pupils, probably made of a different material, would have been inserted.

In the eighteenth century, the figurine was attached to a gilt frame, along with another one, inside a circular compartment by the goldsmith Luigi Valadier. The bronze is part of a group of similar figurines of varying subject preserved in the storerooms of the Palazzina Borghese. The heavily abraded surface and the small size of the preserved fragment prevent a complete examination of the work and its precise dating, which would seem to be in any case between the first and second centuries CE.

Object details

Commentary

This small bust portrays a young, nude, beardless male. His head is protruding, leaning forward and turned to the left. His hair is arranged in long, straight locks, brought forward and defined with a graver. The figure’s expression is serene and absorbed, with eyes defined by puffy eyelids, a straight nose in line with the forehead and a small, partially open mouth with thin lips. There are holes in the eyes for inserting pupils, which were probably made of a different material.

The heavily reworked surface, covered with thick green and black paint, and the work’s current arrangement prevent the careful reading and identification of the subject.  One theory is that it is the figure of a young athlete. The inclination of the neck suggests that it was inspired by the Fano Athlete attributed to Lysippus, who was active in the fourth century BCE (Moreno 1990, pp. 695–702), with the Borghese bronze being a miniature reproduction produced during the Imperial period for use as a decorative element.

The statuette, currently preserved in the Palazzina Borghese’s storerooms, is part of a group of miniature bronzes of various subject that are not mentioned in the inventories or bibliography relative to the archaeological collection. In an exhaustive study published in 2019, Minozzi noted a receipt, dated 1773 and discovered by Gonzàlez-Palacios, for payment for work done by the goldsmith Luigi Valadier on various small bronzes described as ‘alcune figurine accomodate’ (‘a few repaired figurines’), among which she identified the present group (1993, pp. 37, 50). Study of the receipt, which describes filling in missing parts and attaching the figurines to gilt wooden panels of various shape, led the author to attribute the frames to Valadier (2019, pp. 192–195). The beardless male figure, together with another small bronze (inv. CCXCI), is attached to a compartment surrounded by a circular frame, serving as a separator for three small paintings on a long frame. EDXRF analysis of the statuette for the exhibition Valadier. Splendore nella Roma del Settecento, held at the Galleria Borghese in 2019, confirmed its authenticity and identified the material as ternary bronze covered with a painted patina. On the basis of stylistic analysis, a likely date for the work would seem to be between the first and second centuries CE.

Giulia Ciccarello