Head of Silenus

Roman art

This small bust in patinated bronze is set in a circular niche in a gilt frame embellished with festoons by the goldsmith Luigi Valadier in the eighteenth century. The bronze is part of a group of similar figurines of varying subject kept in the storerooms of the Palazzina Borghese. It portrays a nude Silenus, with his head protruding out and covered with long, sparse locks of hair. His thick moustache merges with his luxuriant beard, which entirely covers his cheeks and comes down over his chest in long curls.

It was probably made as a decorative applique and is datable to between the first and second centuries CE.

Object details

Commentary

This small bust portrays a nude Silenus. His round head is nearly bald with the exception of a few long locks pulled over his rounded forehead. The figure’s animal-like appearance is emphasised by his deep-set eyes, protruding ears, thick lips and snub nose. His long moustache merges with his thick beard, which falls in long curls over his chest. The surface seems heavily reworked and smoothed, with traces of black glazing and bronze patches.

The bust was probably used as an applique to decorate the lower part of the handle of a pitcher, where it would have been most clearly visible. In a study identifying the various types of bilobate and trilobate pitchers, published in 2015, Tassinari observes that, among the various themes, the lower part of pitchers of the D1110 type are more frequently decorated, in Naples and Pompeii, with busts of bearded men, especially old satyrs (p. 236). And as Faralli notes, depictions of Silenus were produced in numerous variants in statuary, metal crockery and small bronze sculpture starting in the Hellenistic period and continuing throughout the Imperial age.  They were used to decorate the ends of lecti tricliniares or braziers (2015, p. 104). There is an applique depicting Silenus in the Museo Archeologico, Florence in which more attention has been lavished on details, compared to the Borghese bronze (Faralli 2015, p. 102, no. 59).

The small bust is part of a group of miniature bronzes of various subject, kept in the storerooms of the Palazzina Borghese, that is not mentioned in the inventories or bibliography relative to the archaeological collection. In research published by Minozzi in connection with the exhibition Valadier. Splendore nella Roma del Settecento, held in 2019 at the Galleria Borghese, she noted a receipt, dated 1773 and discovered by Gonzàlez-Palacios, for work done by the goldsmith Luigi Valadier on various small bronzes described as ‘alcune figurine accomodate’ (‘a few repaired figurines’), among which she identified the present group (1993, pp. 37, 50). The receipt describes filling in missing parts and attaching the figurines to gilt wooden panels of various shape, which the author attributes to Valadier as well (2019, pp. 192–195). The small bust of Silenus is set in a circular niche in a frame decorated with festoons. The current arrangement and small size of the fragment prevent a careful reading of the object and its precise dating, but stylistic analysis suggests that it dates to between the first and second centuries CE.

Giulia Ciccarello