Sculpture group of Venus, Mars and Cupid

Roman art

This sculpture group of Venus, Mars and Cupid is an eclectic composition from the Antonine period that juxtaposes two types from the Greek tradition. The Venus, goddess of love and fertility, repeats that of the Capuan Aphrodite (Naples), while Mars, who is usually portrayed according to formula of the Borghese Mars (now in the Louvre), is in this case a reworking of Polykleitos’ Doryphoros. The inclusion of Eros alludes to the god of war’s peaceful intentions, symbolising love and good wishes for prosperity.

The group came from the collection of Giovanni Battista Della Porta and was probably found in the vineyard of Monsignor Santarello near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The sculpture was cited for the first time in the Villa by Iacomo Manilli and by Domenico Montelatici, in 1650 and 1700, who described it on the first floor, in the Camera di Diogene (now Room XV).

Object details

Commentary

According to a few of the old sources (Martinelli 1644, p. 136), this group was found in the vineyard of Monsignor Santarelli near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome. The group entered the collection of Giovanni Battista Della Porta, and it was restored, with an eye toward putting it on the antiquarian market. After negotiations broke down for its purchase by Vespasiano Gonzaga, it was sold to Giovan Battista Borghese in 1609.

The group was cited for the first time by Iacomo Manilli in 1650 and by Domenico Montelatici in 1700. Both described it in the Villa Pinciana on the first floor, in the Camera di Diogene (now Room XV), where it remained, displayed on a painted wood pedestal, until at least 1765. It was not included in the guide published by Luigi Lamberti and Ennio Quirino Visconti in 1796, and it was not included with the works sold to the French in 1807. At the time of the collection’s reinstallation in the Palazzina, between 1819 and 1832, the group was displayed in Room VI of the Casino on a red granite table (1840). It was mentioned by Venturi on the first floor in Room XIV (1893) and then was moved immediately after the collection was sold to the Italian State (1902) to the entrance vestibule, where it was placed on the funerary altar dedicated to Statius. From there, it was moved to the ground floor, in the Salone di Mariano Rossi, and then its current location in the Stanza di Apollo e Dafne.

The group portrays Venus, who uses the art of seduction to placate the bellicosity of Mars, who is conquered by his love for the goddess, while Cupid looks on. According to the Latin writers, Venus was the only deity capable of reining in Mars’ violence. Under the goddess’s influence, the terrifying warrior became a docile lover, removing, in some depictions, not only his clothing but also the weapons that define his traditional iconography (Lucretius, De rerum natura 31–36; Ovid, Ars amatoria 2.563–566). This is one of numerous replicas of the group, which was also often used to portray couples, according to an eclectic formula that was fashionable during the Hadrianic and Antonine periods, when portrait heads were placed on the idealised nude bodies of the divine pair. In this small group, the upper part of the goddess’s body is nude, and the lower part is covered with her mantle. She is in a three-quarter pose, raising her arms towards her companion, who she grasps with her left hand while lightly touching his chest with her right. She places her weight on her right leg, while her left leg is slightly raised, and her foot is resting on a little step. Her head, which is ringed by a band, is turned to her left, and she looks up at her companion. Her face is full and round, and she has a small, full, partially open mouth. Her hair is arranged in a simple style and vaguely described, with soft waves gathered at her nape in a bun. The god of war, who is presented here in ‘heroic nudity’, is portrayed wearing a crested helmet over his thick hair and a balteus slung over his right shoulder. He holds a shield in his left hand and a gladius in his right. His head is turned to his right and slightly raised. He has a round face, framed with soft locks of hair that escape from the visor of his helmet. The figure is shown in a frontal pose. His left leg is slightly bent, and his head is turned to his right. On the left, a small standing Eros is holding a torch and turning his head towards the couple.

The group, which is also known as the Concordia-Gruppe, combines two models that were originally independent. The female figure draws on the semi-nude Aphrodites of the fourth century BCE and the Hellenistic period. The pose of the goddess is generally similar to that of the Capuan Venus (MANN inv. 6017), which in turn derives from the Aphrodite in the famous sanctuary of Acrocorinth and was later reworked into the Roman Victory of Brescia type, dating to the Flavian period (Delivorrias et al 1984, pp. 71–72, nos 627–632). The detail of the drapery gently brushing over the thighs is similar to that of the Venus de Milo (Paris, Louvre, inv. MA399). Mars is instead based on a Polykleitan type and is a reformulation of the famous Doryphoros in accordance with a model also found in the similar group in the Uffizi (Mansuelli 1958, pp. 177–178, no. 160). It is an alternative variant on the more common group, in which the Capuan Venus type is paired with the Borghese Mars type, like the group that was once in the collection of Camillo Borghese, now in the Louvre (inv. MA 1009; De Kersauson 1986–96, no. 59, pp. 144–147) and the ones in Rome in the Capitoline collection (inv. S 652; Avagliano 2010) and the Museo Nazionale Romano (inv. 108522; Calza 1977, pp. 19–20, no. 16, pls XI–XII).

The creation of the original group – possibly in the milieu of the school of Pasiteles, a Greek sculptor active in Rome at the time – dates to the Augustan period, when it was developed to represent the union between Venus, ancestress of the gens Iulia, and Mars, father of Romulus, in the cult group inside the temple of Mars Ultor, in the Forum of Augustus. Mentioned in Ovid (Ovid, Tristezze 2.295–296), a fragment of that group still survives (Rome, Trajan’s Market inv. FA 2563a; Zanker 1968, p. 19). The inclusion of Eros alludes to the peaceful intentions of the god of war, symbolising love and good wishes for prosperity, in accordance with an ideological framework found in various monuments from the Augustan period, such as the Sorrento base (Sorrento, Museo Correale di Terranova), and the Algiers relief (Algiers, National Museum, inv. 217).

The subject enjoyed wide circulation in the second century CE, when it was modified for use in portraiture in sculptures in the round and often used to decorate reliefs and Roman sarcophagi. The couple thus became a symbol of the bond of love, bringer of serenity and peace, alluding to their role as protectors and ancestors of the Romans, in accordance with the narrative, passed down by Hesiod, of the legitimate love between the two deities (Hesiod, Theogony vv. 933–937). With this allegorical meaning, the group also lends itself to propaganda and was chosen for portraits of the imperial couples Hadrian and Sabina and (possibly) Marcus Aurelius and Faustina the Younger, in which the emperor was presented as the guarantor of peace and prosperity.

This is the period, specifically the Antonine age, to which we can date the Borghese group.

Jessica Clementi