Colossal Head of a Female Divinity

Roman art

This colossal head of a woman with an expressionless face has large, elongated eyes, and a full, partially open mouth. Her simple hairstyle is held in place by a slender taenia and parted in the middle. The wavy, parallel locks swell at the temples, almost entirely covering the figure’s ears. Only the lobes are visible, pierced with holes for inserting metal earrings. The colossal size suggest that the figure represents a divinity, although which one cannot be determined. The Borghese head was carved in a neo-Attic workshop that expertly reworked iconography inspired by classical sculpture from the fifth or fourth century BCE, also looking at later periods. Displayed with other sculptures at the Borghese family’s Villa Mondragone in the middle of the eighteenth century, it was moved to the Villa Pinciana in 1819.

Object details

Commentary

In the middle of the eighteenth century, this head of a woman was listed in the inventory of ancient works in the Villa Mondragone, owned by the Borghese family. It was described as a ‘Juno’ and displayed on the tomb of Giulio Metrodoro and the Giulii freedmen (Portico, CCXXXV), which served as a base. In 1819, Evasio Gozzani, minister of the Borghese family and tasked with installing the new collection in the Casino, which had been stripped by the sale of ancient sculptures to Napoleon Bonaparte, arranged for it to be moved to Rome and restored by Francesco Massimiliano Laboureur.

The colossal, thick-set head of a woman has an oval face, a low, triangular forehead, a wide, straight nose with a flat bridge and a round, uplifted chin. Her broad, clearly defined eyebrows, which continue the line of her nose, are very close to her eyes, which are large and elongated, with thin eyelids. Her full mouth, with a bow-shaped upper lip and round lower one, is partially open, revealing her teeth and tongue. Her hair, gathered at the nape of her neck in a small braid and held in place by a slender taenia, is parted in the middle and divided in wavy, parallel locks that swell at the temples, almost entirely covering the figure’s ears. Only the lobes are visible, pierced with holes for inserting metal earrings.  Two asymmetrical curls hang down from her temples.

The colossal size of the sculpture suggests that it depicts a divinity. It was listed as a Juno in the eighteenth-century inventory of the Villa Mondragone and, later, by De Rinaldis and Della Pergola. Nibby, who was the first to describe the sculpture in the guide to the collection, argued against its identification as Juno, instead proposing a Muse, possibly Clio, due to the figure’s youth and air of innocence as well as the simplicity of the hairstyle. Becatti instead considered it a copy of an original from the late fifth century BCE, combining the severe, Polykleitan beauty of the face with the pictorial softness of the hair to create a well calibrated classic whole. Calza, agreeing with Becatti, see it as a neo-Attic reformulation of a model from the fifth century BCE.

While it is impossible to identify the subject of the sculpture, the Borghese head is reminiscent of the Juno in the Farnese Collection (Naples, MANN inv. 6268; Capaldi 2009 pp. 25–26, no. 4). Like the latter, the Borghese head draws on iconography inspired by classical sculpture from the fifth or fourth century BCE. However, the present work was made in a neo-Attic workshop that expertly reworked classical models, while also looking at pieces from later periods, like the Artemis of the Cologne type. That sculpture, which some scholars date to the second half of the fourth century BCE and others date to the subsequent period in an Attic or Argive-Sicyon milieu, features hair divided into bands and parted in the middle, held by a taenia in a way that creates a swell of hair over the forehead (Kahil 1984 pp. 638–639, nos 163–168).

Jessica Clementi