Portrait of a Young Man, restored as Hermes/Mercury, on a satyr’s bust

Roman art

In this sculpture, of unknown provenance, only the head, which is slightly tipped downward, can be securely identified as ancient. The bust with a goatskin, which Calza believed was ancient and identified as a young satyr, does not belong to the head. The modern addition of the petasos, a type of hat that originated in Macedonia, was meant to define the figure as a Hermes/Mercury, the god of travel and trade. The small wings on the sides of the hat, documented in Greek and Roman sculpture and vase painting, emphasises the god’s role as the fast-moving messenger of the gods. Originally, the head probably represented a young man, possibly a portrait, which can be dated to the Antonine period based on the rich chiaroscuro of the hair, the incised irises with carved pupils, the expression of the face, just barely crinkled by the knitted brows, and the full mouth with a pronounced lower lip.

Object details

Commentary

This bust, of unknown provenance, was mentioned for the first time in the Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese of 1833 as one of sixteen displayed on corbels in the vestibule, where it is still on view today.

Numerous new components were made to replace the lost parts. The only part of the work that we can be certain is ancient is the head, which is slightly tipped downward, although it bears heavy traces of restoration on the neck, nose, part of the ears and, especially, the pupils, which have been over-incised so that the eyes are looking upward, in contrast with the inclination of the head.  The bust with a goatskin, which Calza believed was ancient and identified as a young satyr, does not belong to the head. The restoration changed the original work (which was probably a young man, possibly a portrait), turning it into a Hermes/Mercury, the god of travel and trade, by adding a petasos, a type of hat originally from Macedonia that is often found in images of Hermes from the Greco-Roman world. Sometimes, as in the present case, there are small wings on the sides of the hat, documented in both vase painting and sculpture, to emphasise the god’s role as the fast-moving messenger of the gods (on the god’s hat, see Siebert 1990, p. 384).

The restoration of the sculpture as Hermes might be explained by the downward-tipped head of the god in the Lansdowne/Vatican/Louvre type, which scholars have identified as a Roman reformulation inspired by the Polykleitan tradition. The example in the Vatican still has the petasos (Simon 1992, p. 506, no. 20a), while the one in the Louvre has wings sprouting from its hair. The Lansdowne sculpture, which came from Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, had no hat, originally, and the petasos was added on instructions from Gavin Hamilton, to make the subject immediately clear (Angelicoussis 2017, pp. 161–164, no. 21). The Lansdowne torso was extremely popular in the nineteenth century, when it was reproduced in plaster and circulated across Europe through the printed catalogue of the collection (1810), which explains: ‘copying from plaster casts of this bust has been a source of perennial income to Sculptors at Rome; there is scarcely a collector of modern works in Europe that has not in his possession an imitation of this marble’.

Paolo Moreno also noted similarities between this work and the slightly tilted head with a double row of curls on the forehead of the Hermes in Leningrad (Waldhauer 1928, pl. VII), the model for which he believed was a work by the Praxitelean school, based on the thick curls of the young Dionysus unearthed at Olympia in 1877 (Moreno, Viacava 2003).

There is a similar statue of a man with a not original head in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence that was also restored as a Hermes by adding a petasos (inv. OdA 1911, n. 664; Polito 2003). Like the Borghese bust, it has rich chiaroscuro hair, incised irises with carved pupils and a face just barely crinkled by knitted brows. The rendering of these details and the full mouth with a pronounced lower lip date the present sculpture to the Antonine period.

Jessica Clementi