Sandalled Left Foot
This fragment must have originally belonged to a colossal statue.
It represents the front portion of a left foot wearing a sandal, the sole of which is held on the foot with a leather strap between the toes decorated with an ivy leaf. This embellishment might link the statue to a figure from the circle of Dionysus or Dionysus himself.
The accurate rendering of the details dates the sculpture to the second century CE.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Medium
Dimensions
height 48 cm; width 58 cm
Provenance
Borghese Collection, cited for the first time in the Indicazione of 1840 (p. 6, no. 23). Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, C., p. 41, no. 8. Purchased by the Italian State, 1902.
Commentary
This fragment of the front portion of a sandalled left foot would have come from a colossal statue. The sole of the sandal is held on the foot with a leather strap between the toes decorated at the join with an ivy leaf. This embellishment suggests that the statue portrayed a figure from the circle of Dionysus or the god himself. The whole foot would have measured about one metre, and so the statue must have been three times life size. Although the incomplete nature of the fragment makes it difficult to date, the precise, highly refined finishing suggests that it is from the second century CE.
There is a very similar fragment at the Museo Nazionale Romano delle Terme di Diocleziano, Rome, decorated with arrow-shaped strips of leather and a small fibula embellished with a fig leaf (Colantonio 2019, p. 158).
Giulia Ciccarello
Bibliography
- Indicazione delle opere antiche di scultura esistenti nel primo piano della Villa Borghese, Roma 1840, p. 6, n. 23.
- A. Nibby, Roma nell’anno 1838, Roma 1841, p. 910, n. 23.
- Indicazione delle opere antiche di scultura esistenti nel primo piano della Villa Borghese, Roma 1854 (1873), p. 7, n. 27.
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 11.
- G. Giusti, La Galerie Borghèse et la Ville Humbert Premier à Rome, Roma 1904, p. 14.
- P. Moreno, A.Viacava, I marmi antichi della Galleria Borghese. La collezione archeologica di Camillo e Francesco Borghese, Roma 2003, p. 87, n. 41.
- S. Colantonio, Frammento di piede con sandalo, in Ai piedi degli dei. Le calzature antiche e la loro fortuna nella cultura del Novecento, catalogo della mostra, (Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, dicembre 2019-aprile2020), a cura di L. Camin, C. Chiarelli, F. Paolucci, Livorno 2019, p. 158.
- Scheda di catalogo 12/01008570, P. Moreno 1976; aggiornamento G. Ciccarello 2020
