Statue of a Togate Man with Head of Hermarchus (not original)

Roman art

This statue, which was heavily damaged by long exposure to the elements, represents a togate man with his left leg bearing his weight and his right leg slightly bent and to the side. The figure is wearing a tunic and a generous toga that is wrapped around his body. The drapery is held up by his left forearm, which is extended in an offering gesture, while the right arm, restored in the eighteenth century, was probably originally raised. The deep folds, carved using a drill, are perfectly integrated with the form and volume of the fabric, suggesting, along with the naturalistic workmanship, a date no later than the Severan period. The head of a mature, bearded man, which is not original to the statue, shares affinities with the iconography of the Epicurean philosopher Hermarchus (c. 250 BCE) and can be dated, based on stylistic analysis, to the Hadrianic period.

Object details

Commentary

In 1837, during the structural renovation of the Villa Pinciana, the architect Luigi Canina arranged for the installation of various sculptures on the main facade, installing the present sculpture, of unknown provenance, in one of the two symmetrical niches in the middle of the three lower windows on the main facade of the Casino, between the aedicules hosting Hercules and the statue of a woman wearing a mantle (Petrucci 2014, p. 190).

This statue, which was heavily damaged by long exposure to the elements, represents a togate man with his left leg bearing his weight and his right leg slightly bent and to the side. The figure is wearing a tunic and a generous toga virilis that is wrapped around his body, forming a wide sinus that extends to the knee. The drapery is held up by his left forearm, which is extended in an offering gesture, while the right arm, restored in the eighteenth century, as attested by a bronze pin, now lost, was probably originally raised. The balteus extends diagonally in dense folds from the right side up over the left shoulder, the umbo emerging from the balteus in the usual ‘U’ shape. The style of the drapery of the togate Borghese statue (corresponding to the Bb type in the Goette classification) was popular during the Augustan period and, although attestations are rare, continued to be used beyond the Severan period.

From the cases for which the provenance is known, we know that togate statues could serve an honorary function in public settings or a private, mainly funerary, one.

In the Borghese example, the deep folds, carved using a drill, are perfectly integrated with the form and volume of the fabric, suggesting, along with the naturalistic workmanship, a date no later than the Severan period.

The capsa for holding textual material that was used as a support element near the left leg was probably the rationale for adding the ancient head of a philosopher. Despite the poor state of preservation, it is still possible to see close similarities between this head of a mature bearded man and the iconography of Epicurean philosophers and, as argued by Paolo Moreno, the features typically found in portraits of Hermarchus (c. 250 BCE). Specifically, the short hair combed forward with a slight part above the right eye, the almost horizontal eyebrows, the small, elongated eyes with prominent eyelids, the light beard with snake-like locks, the small, partially open, meditative mouth and the exposed ears. This male type, other copies of which are known (Kruse-Bertold 1975, note 388), can be associated with the A type in the classification of portraits of Hermarchus, which derived from an original dating to the early third century BCE. There is an example of the A type in the Museo Nazionale Romano (inv. 125567; Felletti Maj 1953; Belli Pasqua 1987; Caso 2013). This type is clearly distinct from the later B type, dated between 270 and 250 BCE, the most famous copy of which, found in Herculaneum, is in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples (inv. 5466; vd. Moesch 2008, no. 74; for an overview of the relevant interpretative and chronological theories, see Belli Pasqua 1987 and Paolucci 2001).

The Borghese copy has a dull quality, ascribable to the uninspired handling of the surfaces, and can be dated to the Hadrianic period.

Jessica Clementi