Dionysian Relief

Roman art

This relief, set in a non-ancient frame, depicts two arbitrarily juxtaposed groups. On one side, a young satyr holding a stick with a curved handle walks to the left while looking back over his shoulder at an Eros riding a goat. On the right, Pan, the god of the countryside and flocks, is depicted in profile facing right, holding an offering of the head of a goat over a flame; the body of the animal lies at his feet. The first group, completed by a fragment in the Salone, inv. VIIL, is probably from the long side of a rectangular monument that might have also included two other reliefs in the Salone, inv. XLIX, VIIIL and one in Room II, inv. IIC. The second group, also separated by a break reassembled by a modern restorer, was probably part of a short side. The relief was well known starting from at least the end of the fifteenth century, as documented by numerous drawings made between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and various copies and depictions. At the end of the seventeenth century, it was used to decorate the central fountain in the garden of the Palazzo in Campo Marzio, and then it was moved to the ground of the Villa di Porta Pinciana, after which it was restored and put in display in the Casino in 1826.

Object details

Commentary

The present relief and the others in the Salone (inv. VIIIL, XLIX) and Room II (inv. IIIC) were part of a single monument, which Christian Hülsen argued was a rectangular base measuring 220 cm x 80 cm x 60 cm (Hülsen 1913), and other scholars have seen as a continuous frieze measuring 7 m long that included another relief (Herdejürgen 1997). The four reliefs were well known from at least the end of the fifteenth century, as documented by numerous drawings made between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, which also provide information useful for reconstructing the original iconography, prior to the nineteenth-century reassembly (Pray Bober, Rubistein 1986). The monument’s original location is unknown, but scholars agree that they were later in an easily accessible public space, possibly a church, considering their popularity in the Renaissance, attested by various copies and depictions, including in a painting by Pinturicchio in the Palazzina to Giuliano della Rovere at SS. Apostoli (Cavallaro 1993).

It is possible that the relief decorated the central fountain in the garden of the Palazzo in Campo Marzio between the end of the seventeenth century and 1819, specifically the part of the fountain on the right that was not included in the engraving by Venturini, which did, however, document other reliefs that were, as we will see, part of the same monument (Falda 1691, pl. 11). The presence of the relief in the garden was in fact documented by Georg Zoëga (Herdejürgen 1997, note 36). At a later time, the reliefs were moved to the grounds of the Villa di Porta Pinciana, where they remained until 1826 and the installation of the new collection in the Casino, which had been stripped by the massive sale to Napoleon Bonaparte. At that time, Evasio Gozzani arranged for it to be restored by Massimiliano Laboureur or Antonio D’Este.

The present relief, which is inserted in a non-ancient frame, depicts two groups that were arbitrarily juxtaposed by the nineteenth-century restorer. On the left, a young satyr is walking to the left, holding a pedum (a kind of stick with a curved handle used by shepherds), and looking back over his shoulder at an Eros riding a goat, which was originally shown startled by the appearance of a snake coiled up on a tree, as attested by the Renaissance drawings. On the right, Pan, the god of the countryside and flocks, is portrayed with a strong chin, two long horns, a hairy body and legs like a goat and shown in profile facing right, holding an offering of the head of a goat over a flame; the body of the animal lies at his feet.

The first group, completed by a fragment in the Salone, inv. VIIL, was probably part of one of the monument’s long sides, replicated on the opposite side in a mirror image (Salone, inv. XLIX and Room II, inv. IIC), with some variants.

The second group, also separated by a break reassembled by a modern restorer, was probably part of a short side. It, too, was replicated on the other short side in a mirror image (Salone, inv. XLIX), which is in turn heavily restored and includes the addition of a herm of Dionysus, the statue of which might have been set on a marble base.

Some scholars have argued that there was also a fifth relief, now lost but attested in Venturini’s engraving, that depicts two satyrs trying to seduce a sleeping nymph. If this interpretation is correct, the monument would not have been a base but rather a continuous frieze measuring 7 metres long, bookended by the two groups of Pan making a sacrifice (Herdejürgen 1997).

During the Hellenistic period, the Dionysian thiasos, with its symbolic elements and natural setting, became an especially popular theme for various supports, including puteals, sarcophagi, altars and statue bases, and was sometimes even used to decorate outdoor spaces, like gardens. It quickly turned into a genre subject and allusion to the joy of the dance-filled celebrations held in preparation of the sacrificial ritual and the earthly pleasure offered by Dionysus.

Based on stylistic analysis of the finely carved bodies and faces as well as the attention paid to describing the setting, the Borghese relief is universally agreed to date to the first half of the first century BCE, tracing back to a late-Hellenistic model inspired by late-Classical art.

Jessica Clementi