Portrait of Vespasian
1598 - 1658
The person portrayed is Titus Flavius Vespasian, the first emperor of the Flavian dynasty: the large head, with the forehead furrowed by wrinkles, the thin mouth and the protruding chin are the recurrent features in his iconography, known from numerous ancient sculptures.
The bust is attributed, on the basis of a payment kept in the Borghese Archive, to Tommaso Fedeli, and was kept in the Villa Pinciana in what is today Room 8. It was added between 1830 and 1833 to the series of imperial and consular busts from the Palazzo Borghese and exhibited with them in Room 4. The artist was particularly well-known in Roman circles for his skill in working with porphyry.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Medium
porphyry and oriental alabaster
Dimensions
Provenance
Made for Scipione Borghese (Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Archivio Borghese, 1030, Villa Pinciana, 1609-1624, in I. Faldi, Galleria Borghese. Le sculture dal sec. XVI al XIX, Roma 1954, p. 17). Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 49, no. 111. Purchased by the State, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1995/ 1996C.B.C. Coop. a.r.l.
Commentary
The emperor Vespasian is portrayed frontally. His head has a broad forehead creasedwith wrinkles, his eyes emphasised by dark circles, a thin mouth and a protruding chin. He wears a paludamentum, fastened at the right shoulder with a circular fibula and arranged in flattened folds that recur with the same pattern in some busts of the series attributed to Giovanni Battista della Porta (inv. LIII). A shoulder strap of the cuirass and the robe beneath it can be glimpsed. The bust contains all the characteristic elements of the iconography of the first emperor of the Flavian dynasty, even if in some points they are simplified compared to the more famous ancient prototypes. This is most noticeable in the eyes, enlarged here and lacking the drooping eyelids present in all his portraits and the typical formation of a crease - almost a doubling - over the eyebrow arch. The bust differs from the Caesar series with which it is displayed due to the different material used in the pedestal.
This is probably the replica of the Vespasian added between 1830 and 1832 to the collection of sixteen portraits removed from the gallery of Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio and placed in Room 4 of the Villa Pinciana (Nibby 1832, pp. 94-96). Faldi identifies the bust with a Vespasian in porphyry and alabaster mentioned in an inventory of 1765 as being displayed in the Gladiator Room. He also hypothesises that it is the same one mentioned in a document in the Borghese Archive as having been made by Tommaso Fedeli in 1619 (Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Archivio Borghese, 1030, Villa Pinciana, 1609-1624, in Faldi 1954, p. 17). A head of Vespasian “with a quince-coloured bust” is mentioned by Manilli in the Saturn Room, now Room 8 (Manilli 1650, p. 86). The identification in the description of the bust left by Montelatici in the Silenus Room, corresponding to the same room, is less convincing: “Vespasian, with the bust of a holy man and the foot of an African” (1700, p. 209).
Regarding Fedeli, whose biographical information is extremely scarce, we know from Bellori that he was called “Tommaso del porfido, Tommaso of the porphyry, for his ease in working with it and gently guiding it to perfection” (in Di Castro 1993, p. 150).
Sonja Felici
Bibliography
- I. Manilli, Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pinciana, Roma 1650, p. 86.
- D. Montelatici, Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pinciana con l’ornamenti che si osservano nel di lei Palazzo, Roma 1700, p. 209.
- A. Nibby, Itinerario di Roma e delle sue vicinanze, vol. 2, Roma 1830, p. 360.
- A. Nibby, Monumenti scelti della Villa Borghese, Roma 1832, pp. 95-96.
- A. Nibby, Roma nell’anno MDCCCXXXVIII. Parte seconda moderna, Roma 1841, pp. 919-920.
- Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, a cura di E. Z. Platner, III, 3, Stuttgart-Tübingen 1842, p. 249.
- E. Pistolesi, Descrizione di Roma e suoi contorni, Roma, Gallarini, 1852, p. 385.
- Indicazione delle opere antiche di scultura esistenti nel primo piano del Palazzo della Villa Borghese, Roma 1854 (1873), I, p. 19.
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, pp. 33-34.
- A. De Rinaldis, La R. Galleria Borghese in Roma, Roma 1935, p. 13.
- A. De Rinaldis, Arte decorativa nella Galleria Borghese, in “Rassegna della Istruzione artistica”, 10-11-12, 1935, pp. 311-319, in part. p. 318.
- A. De Rinaldis, Catalogo della Galleria Borghese in Roma, Roma 1948, p. 25.
- P. Della Pergola, La galleria Borghese in Roma, Roma 1951, pp. 14-15.
- I. Faldi, Galleria Borghese. Le sculture dal sec. XVI al XIX, Roma 1954, pp. 16-17, cat. 11, fig. 11p.
- H. Hibbard, Palazzo Borghese Studies. II, the Galleria, in “The Burlington magazine”, 104,1962, pp. 9-20.
- P. Della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese in Roma, Roma 1974, pp. 14-15.
- Le collezioni della Galleria Borghese, a cura di S. Staccioli, P. Moreno, Milano 1981, p. 103.
- D. Di Castro Moscati, Il porfido rosso antico, una esclusività romana, in “Gazzetta antiquaria”, 1, 1987, pp. 42-48.
- D. Di Castro, Tommaso Fedeli, virtuoso del porfido, in “Antologia di belle arti”, 43/47, 1993, pp. 150-157.
- E. Fumagalli, Palazzo Borghese: committenza e decorazione privata, Roma 1994.
- Galleria Borghese, a cura di A. Coliva, Roma 1994, p. 15.
- Guida alla Galleria Borghese, a cura di K. Herrmann Fiore, Roma 1997, p. 43.
- M.C. Marchei, Alabastro egiziano o cotognino, onice, in Marmi antichi, a cura di G. Borghini, Roma 1997, pp. 140-141, cat. 4; Porfido rosso, Ibidem, p. 274, cat. 116.
- P. Moreno, C. Stefani, Galleria Borghese, Milano 2000, p. 129.
- E. Rosso, in Divus Vespasianus: il bimillenario dei Flavi, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Colosseo, Curia e Criptoportico "neroniano" 2009-2010), a cura di F. Coarelli, F.P. Arata, Milano 2009, pp. 403 cat. 1, 495 cat. 97.
- V. Curzi, Allestimenti di dimore romane tra Seicento e Settecento: un itinerario nella tradizione classicista dell’Urbe, in Il capitale culturale, Supplementi 8 (2018), pp. 301-316, in part. 305-306.
- D. Del Bufalo, Porphyry. Red imperial porphyry. Power and religion, Torino 2018, p. 116, n. H79.
- Scheda di catalogo 12/01008650, S. Pellizzari 1983; aggiornamento S. Felici 2020.
