Isis Pelagia, restored as Ceres

Roman art

This statue is a representation of the goddess as Isis Pelagia, Lady of the Seas and protector of sailors, as expressed by the position of the spread legs and the drapery gathered below the breasts in an Isis knot. The figure is wearing a long, sleeved chiton that reveals her feet and a fringed mantle.

Purchased in 1607 by Cardinal Scipione Borghese from the Ceoli family, the sculpture was restored in the mid seventeenth century as Ceres, with the addition of the white marble limbs and head. In the middle of the seventeenth century, it is documented in a niche on the Villa Borghese grounds and later, in 1832, in Room VII. Based on stylistic analysis and comparison with similar works, it is a replica of Hellenistic-Alexandrian models and datable to the second century CE.

Object details

Commentary

This sculpture was in the Ceoli Collection, which was purchased by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1607 (de Lachenal 1982, pp. 52–55). Kalveram notes that a ‘statua di Biscio che fa atto di camminare’ (‘statue in Biscio portrayed walking’) was moved from the Casino Borghese to the grounds, sometime between 1627 and 1628 (p. 259, no. 218). In 1650, Manilli also reported that it was on the grounds, at the end of one of the two lanes skirting the palazzo, ‘dentro vna nicchia trà due colonne di marmo nero, vna Statua di Cerere, più grande assai del naturale, di marmo bianco, con la veste di marmo nero’ (‘in a niche between two black marble columns, a statue of Ceres, larger than life size, in white marble with black marble clothing’; p. 127). In 1700, Montelatici specified that the figure was ‘coronata di spighe; di cui eccettuando la testa, le mani, & i piedi, di marmo bianco, il rimanente di essa è tutto di marmo nero’ (‘crowned with ears of grain; all of which in black marble with the exception of the head, hands and feet, in white marble’; p. 44). In 1832, Nibby reported that it was in Room V, which is now Room VII, describing it as a ‘statua moderna di Cerere’ (‘modern statue of Ceres’; p. 120).

The woman is portrayed moving to the right, with her right leg advanced and to the side, bearing her weight, and the left leg, shown frontally, moved back to provide momentum.  She is wearing a long, sleeved chiton with fine pleats that fall to the ground, revealing her toes. She is also wearing a fringed mantle over her shoulders that is gathered below her breasts in an Isis knot called a Knotenpalla, which creates a series of folds that are spread by her wide gait. Her torso and head are turned towards the viewer. Restored in white marble as Ceres, with the addition of the limbs and head, encircled by a crown of ears of grain, the statue originally represented Isis. And more specifically, Isis Pelagia, protector of navigation and sailors. In depictions of the goddess found especially on reliefs like the one in Delos from the first century BCE and on coins, gems and oil lamps, the figure is wearing a high-girdled chiton, and her legs are spread on the prow of a ship, her hands holding the edge of a sail blown by the wind (Bruneau 1961). Without a precise iconographic model, it is difficult to identify a finished statuary type and its replicas (Bruneau 1974, pp. 353–381; Agnoli 2002, pp. 37–40). As observed by Pucci, although the Borghese statue has neither a mantle nor a wind-filled sail, the position of the legs and the type of clothing are characteristic of the goddess, and so the sail might have been made of a perishable material like bronze or even fabric, or the statue might have been part of a more complex monument (1976, pp. 1188–1190).

The sculpture is typologically comparable to a statue in the Torlonia Collection (formerly the Giustiniani Collection) that was also restored as Ceres (Inv. 180: Capaldi 2020, pp. 246–247) and another in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, (Inv. 6372: Longobardo 2006, p. 148), both of which are marked by strong contrast between the grey marble drapery and white marble body. The use of dark marble for sculptures of the goddess in the round is probably linked in some way to the cult itself. In the Metamorphoses, Apuleius writes that Lucius, to whom Isis had appeared in a dream, was particularly struck by her ‘palla nigerrima splendescens atro nitore quae […] ad ultimas oras nodulis fimbriarum confluebat’ (11.3).

In light of the composition and stylistic features, the sculpture seems to have been inspired by Hellenistic-Alexandrian art, reworked in the Roman context in the second century CE.

Giulia Ciccarello