Cloaked Female Statue

Roman art

The female figure wears a long chiton with a short cape over it; the tunic falls to the ground, leaving the toes uncovered and presenting dynamic heavy folds, which laterally follow the movement of the legs. The short cape covers the matron’s upper body and head and is draped over her left shoulder, while her arms come forward in an offering gesture. The head, that is not original, depicts a young woman with an elongated face, large eyes, a small closed mouth and wavy hair with a central parting. First placed in Room VI, this statue is described by Nibby as a statue of Piety with a portrait head. After a temporary collocation in Room I, Venturi records it in Room VIII; between 1905–1915 it was displayed in one of the windows of the Terrace, on the main facade.

Object details

Commentary

The statue, whose provenance is unknown, is first described in Nibby’s Guide (1832) in Room IV (currently Room VI), and identified as a representation of Pietas with an iconic function: ‘The pose and the veiled costume in which it is represented show how Piety, that is Religion, was portrayed, as often found in Roman monuments of all kinds, or perhaps is simply a representation of the act of sacrificing, since the arms in no way suggest they are modern and insignificant work’. In the Inventario Fidecommissario (1833), the statue is mentioned in the Sala della Cerere (Room I) and described as a ‘Veiled Cybele’. At a later date, the sculpture was moved to Room VIII, where Venturi saw it (1893). Between 1905 and 1915 it was finally placed to decorate one of the large windows of the Terrace framed by aediculae on the main facade of the Borghese Casino, where it still stands today (Petrucci 2014). The female figure is standing on her right leg, with the left slightly bent forward; the ponderation determines a slight inclination of the torso, with the right hip higher than the left. The figure is wearing a long chiton with a short cape over it; the tunic reaches down to the ground, leaving the toes uncovered, and is moved by heavy folds, which laterally follow the movement of the legs.

The short cape covers the matron’s upper body and head and is draped over her left shoulder, while her arms are stretched forward in a gesture whose interpretation is partly hampered by a modern restoration but which, as Nibby guessed, was probably meant to be an offering, thus suggesting the statue’s provenance might be a funerary context.

The head, that is not original and perhaps replaced by the nineteenth-century restorer, is that of a young woman with an elongated face, large eyes and plastically rendered pelta-shaped irises; the mouth, small and well-defined, is closed. The wavy hair is parted in the centre and gathered at the nape of the neck in a bun under the veil covering the head. The typology of the veiled-headed female figure, already widespread in early Hellenistic votive statuary (Horn 1931), enjoyed great fortune in Roman sculptural production of the Imperial age, especially in funerary contexts. However, the simplified rendition of the drapery of the Borghese statue, which plays out at the front in just a few hard folds, and the difficulty of finding close iconographic comparisons with other idealistic or iconic female statues of the Imperial age leave open the possibility, already proposed by restorers who have been involved in recent conservation work on the sculpture, that it may be for the most part a ‘modern work’.

Jessica Clementi