Portrait of Cicero
Text not translated yetIl busto in porfido e alabastro riproduce le fattezze di Marco Tullio Cicerone, che vi risulta ritratto in età matura. Il volto solcato da rughe e lo sguardo concentrato ben aderiscono alla personalità dell’oratore così come ci è nota dai racconti dei contemporanei e dall’iconografia antica. All’attenta caratterizzazione del volto non corrisponde una altrettanto precisa definizione del busto, che presenta incertezze nelle pieghe della toga.
Il ritratto di Cicerone risulta documentato per la prima volta nel 1832 nella sala IV della Villa Pinciana, dove è esposto insieme ad altri sedici busti di imperatori e consoli romani eseguiti con gli stessi materiali e di misure simili a formare un’unica serie. Per tutti la critica ha proposto una datazione al XVII secolo.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
porphyry and oriental alabaster
Dimensions
Provenance
Included in decoration of the Gallery of Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio between 1674 and 1676 (H. Hibbard, ‘Palazzo Borghese Studies. II, the Galleria’, The Burlington Magazine, 104 (1962), p. 11, no. 12); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, C, p. 49, no. 111. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1995/ 1996 C.B.C. Coop. a.r.l.
Commentary
The philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is represented with his head turned to his left. His hair is combed toward his right, leaving his wrinkled forehead uncovered and his contracted eyebrows clearly visible. Signs of his age and expression are also evident on the sides of his eyes and in his cheeks. This portrait of Cicero at a mature stage of his life reflects the strong personality for which he is known and corresponds to other representations of him which have come down from Antiquity.
The alabaster bust shows the toga contabulata, which was worn with the front edge wrapped around the chest rather than let fall toward the ground. This motif served only to evoke the past and was philologically inaccurate, given that the garment was only in use among Romans in the later imperial era. A straight, shallow groove is visible on the right shoulder, which is not in any way connected to the movement of the garments.
The work is displayed in Room 4 of Galleria Borghese together with 15 busts in porphyry and alabaster from the family’s palazzo in Campo Marzio. Here they were once located in the gallery, framed by a plaster decoration made by Cosimo Fancelli between 1674 and 1676. According to documents from the Borghese Archive, the series was composed of the ‘Twelve Caesars’, with the addition of Nerva and Trajan as well as second versions of Vitellius and Titus (Vatican Secret Archive, AB, b. 5688, no. 15, published in Hibbard 1962, appendix, doc. I, pp. 19-20). In 1830 Nibby saw the series when it was still in Campo Marzio, describing the works as ‘16 busts with heads in porphyry, representing the 12 Caesars and 4 consuls’. Two years later, when they had been moved to Villa Pinciana and displayed along the wall of Room 4, he listed them as Trajan, Galba, Claudius, Otho, Vespasian (two exemplars) Scipio Africanus, Agrippa, Augustus, Vitellius (two exemplars), Titus, Nero, Cicero, Domitian, Vespasian, Caligula and Tiberius; this catalogue was confirmed by the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario.
Yet if this description (which includes a second Vespasian, executed by Tommaso Fedeli in 1619 and transferred from the Gladiator Room) corresponds to the current state of the series, we are left with several uncertainties: to begin with, we must ask what happened to the busts of Caesar, Titus and Nerva, which were present in 1674-76 but do not form part of the series today; secondly, we must wonder who the fourth consul referred to by Nibby in 1830 could be, given that currently only three are represented (Agrippa, Cicero and Scipio Africanus); and finally, we must inquire where the busts of the consuls came from. It is therefore possible that the sculptures displayed in the gallery, which were already present in Palazzo Borghese, did not correspond to those envisioned for the iconographic programme of the vault: this discrepancy may indeed account for the errors of identification in our sources. In that case, as Hibbard suggested, the bust of Cicero (or of Scipio Africanus) may have been used in place of that of Nerva (1962, p. 11 no. 12). The theory of possible substitutions is supported by the common date of execution of the busts, which critics believe were all sculpted in the same period during the 17th century (Faldi 1954, pp. 16-17; Della Pergola, 1974; Moreno, C. Stefani, 2000, p. 129; Del Bufalo 2018, p. 116).
Sonja Felici
Bibliography
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