The head, with its round, full face and plump parted lips, is set on a modern bust at a three-quarter right angle, as in most known replicas of the so-called ‘Aphrodite Sappho’ type. In fact, at least three variants of this model are known, defined by the hairstyle and the arrangement of the headbands and of the head; in this case, the rich hairstyle features a tainia on the mid-axis of the head, kept in place by lateral headbands, and ending with the characteristic curl folded at the centre of the forehead. Replicas of this head, of which over twenty Roman period examples are known, were mainly intended for decorative use, and often displayed as pendants.
Borghese Collection (Falda 1691, table 12)?; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, C, p. 50, no. 128 (room V). Purchased by the Italian State, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
1996, CBC Coop. a r.l.
Commentary
This head of a woman, mounted on a modern bust of unknown provenance, was entrusted to the sculptor and restorer Massimiliano Labourer in 1828 by Giuseppe Gozzani, the minister of the House of Borghese responsible for the purchase of statues for the new Borghese collection. The bust may have been part of the Villa Pinciana collection as early as the seventeenth century, as it matches a sculpture with a wide sash and gathered up hair in Venturini’s engraving of the decorative facade of the Inner Garden Fountain, which is positioned on an axis with the main entrance to Palazzo Borghese (Falda 1691, table 12). In Antonio Nibby’s guide, the head, displayed in the Hermaphrodite Room, is described as a portrait of Sappho.
The head, with its round, full face and plump parted lips, is set on a modern bust at a three-quarter right angle, as in most known replicas of the so-called ‘Aphrodite Sappho’ type. It is likely that the view from the left was also proposed in the statuary model, thus allowing the viewers to admire the rich hairstyle, held in place by a tainia on the mid-axis of the head and lateral headbands, and ending with the characteristic curl folded at the centre of the forehead.
The head presents the same measurements as a specular statue in the Galleria Borghese collections, to whose object description we refer for details. The definition of the not entirely open thick eyelids, relate this piece to one in the Museo Nazionale in Naples, from Herculaneum and unanimously considered to be the best known exemplary (Gasparri 2000). Technical and stylistic elements indicate the Borghese bust may date to the age of Trajan.
Jessica Clementi
July 2024
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Bibliography
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Scheda di catalogo 12/01008449, P. Moreno 1976; aggiornamento G. Ciccarello 2021
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