Female Head, restored as Isis (bust not original)

Roman art

This bust depicts a female figure with drapery that leaves the right breast exposed. Critics consider the sculpture to be a representation of Tellus or of the goddess Isis. The latter hypothesis seems to have guided the conservation carried out in the nineteenth century. 

Mentioned for the first time in Room 7 (the Egyptian room) in 1854, we find it again in 1893 in Room 2, and finally, in 1998, permanently assigned to Room 1.  

The hairdo and the soft rendering of the surfaces seems to suggest it was inspired by fifth century BCE models of which the Borghese sculpture is considered to be a replica from the second century CE.  

Object details

Commentary

In the Indicazione of 1854, this sculpture is listed as belonging to Room 7, the so-called Egyptian room, mentioned on p. 26, number 12; in 1893, Venturi cites it in Room 2 as ‘Bust of a woman atop Claudio Felici’s memorial stone. Isis’s attributes have been added’ (p. 27). After it was restored in 1998, it was permanently placed in Room 1.  

The bust is set on a round base decorated on the front with a relief depicting two bulls facing one another and between them a basket full of fruit resting on plant volutes. The female figure is cut off right below the chest and is wearing drapery that leaves her right breast bare, fastened on the right shoulder by a round fibula. The shoulders are lowered, the head slightly tilted to the right. The features of the face are hard and dry, the eyes elongated with thick eyelids surmounted by deeply arched eyebrows joined at the summit of the nose. The lips of the half-open mouth are small and full. The hair, parted down the middle, is bound by a diadem with long, wavy strands of hair escaping it at the front to frame the forehead, and follow the line of the neck on the back. In 1926, Lippold considered the bust to be ancient. He saw in it a personification of Tellus because of the fruits and animals depicted in relief on the base (1926, p. 8, no. 2731). In 1957, Calza, who offered the same interpretation, considered the pediment a Renaissance copy dating back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century (p. 10, no. 63). The identification with Isis seems to be supported by the comparison with a bust of the goddess in the museum in Göttingen dated to the late Hadrianic era. Comparing the two works, Kruse observed that the Borghese replica possessed a greater dynamism in the rendering of the hair, a greater wealth of details, but minor quality. The writer also speculated that the lock just above the forehead, added during conservation, might have replaced the kalathos, a basket with a narrow foot, present in the German version. The sculptures should both be considered neo-Classical replicas datable to the second century CE and derived from fifth century BCE models (1967, pp. 568-579, figs. 3–4). This chronological setting is shared by Moreno, who also refers the two bulls facing one another in the relief to the heraldic insignia of the Borgia family (2003 p. 141, no. 105). 

Giulia Ciccarello