Statue of Aphrodite with Modern Artemis Head

Roman art

The figure, representative of one of the many variants of the semi-covered Venus pudica widespread in the Late Hellenistic and Imperial periods, stands on her right leg, with the left leg slightly moved back; her almost entirely nude body is framed by a mantle which she stretches with her right hand over her shoulder, generating a sharp contrast between her soft shapes and the chiaroscuro frame of the fabric, with notable affinities with a Villa Doria Pamphilij Aphrodite. The head is a modern integration, which recalls a lunar deity, such as Selene-Moon or Artemis-Diana; the extensive use of the drill combined with the solid form of the body suggest this sculpture may date to the second half of the second century CE.

Initially displayed in the Egyptian Room (Room VII), in 1888 it was moved to Room V and then found its final collocation in the portico, probably in the mid-twentieth century.

Object details

Commentary

Initially displayed in the Egyptian Room (Room VII), as mentioned in the Indicazione delle opere antiche di scultura esistenti nel primo piano della Villa Borghese of 1840 and 1873 as well as in Nibby’s 1838 guidebook, this statue was moved in 1888 to Room V, in place of the Muse Thalia from Mount Calvo, together with other sculptures of Venus. Adolfo Venturi mentions it here in 1893, and so do Giovanni Giusti in 1904 and Lippold in 1925; probably in the mid-twentieth century it was moved to its current position in the portico.

The non original quality of the head was already pointed out by Venturi, who attributed it to a sixteenth-century restoration. The female figure, identifiable as Venus, the goddess of love and fertility, stands on her right leg, slightly moving the left to the back; the body, in a frontal position, is almost nude: with her right hand she stretches a mantle over her shoulder, making it float above her head, concealing the back and describing an ample curve, reaching the ground and completely covering her left leg, creating full gentle folds. The original position of the left arm which was integrated during a restoration, is uncertain.

The statue belongs to the large series of Venus Pudica statues, for which the tracing of a specific archetype has proven difficult, given the high circulation of this subject in the Late Hellenistic and Imperial periods, with a proliferation of iconographic variations. In this particular case the composition is characterised by the contrast between the soft shapes of the nude body and the chiaroscuro frame of the mantle, with a reference to the  Landolina Venus, an iconographic invention of Late Hellenism on the theme of the semi-covered Pudica, believed to be a replica of the famous cult image worshipped in the Syracusan sanctuary of Venus Callipyge, a type that has been handed down in several replicas and variants from the Roman period with a decorative character and used in public and private contexts (Delivorrias et alii 1984, p. 83, nos. 743–747). Finally, the affinity between the present statue and the Aphrodite from Villa Doria Pamphilij, the most similar to the Borghese exemplary, but with an inverted rhythm, is remarkable (Palma 1977, p. 74 no. 75; Delivorrias et alii 1984, p. 81, no. 725).

The modern head, generally considered to be a Renaissance piece, features a crescent moon that qualifies the divine figure as Selene-Moon (Gury 1994, pp. 706–15) or Artemis-Diana (Kahil 1984, p. 689, nos. 906, 907, 909), with some similarities in the oval of the face and the minute features to the Diana of Poitiers at Fontainebleau (Moreno, Viacava 2003, p. 60). Despite the loss of the head, the extensive use of the drill can be noted in the rendering of the folds of the drapery. This aspect, combined with the solid quality of the body treatment, suggest a generic attribution of the sculpture to the second half of the second century CE.

Jessica Clementi