Statuette of Artemis

Roman art

This tiny statuette in patinated bronze is an exemplar of the Artemis the Huntress type, standing with her weight on her right leg and her left leg moved slightly to the back. The figure, clothed in a long chiton, is about to shoot an arrow from the bow she holds in her left hand while she pulls an arrow from her quiver with her right.

During the eighteenth century, this small bronze was repaired with fill and attached, probably by the goldsmith Luigi Valadier, as a decorative element to a long gilt frame, alternated with three similar figurines and three small painted panels. There is a series of similar small bronzes of various subject, in the storerooms of the Palazzina Borghese.

This bronze is a copy inspired by a statue type produced by the circle of Praxiteles and is datable to the first century CE.

Object details

Commentary

In this statuette, the female figure is portrayed standing with her weight on her left leg while her right is slightly moved back. Her torso and head are slightly turned to the left. the direction in which she is about to shoot an arrow from the bow she holds in her outstretched left arm. Her right arm is raised and bent at the elbow, and she must have been pulling an arrow from the quiver on her back with her right hand. She is wearing a long chiton with an ample apoptygma. The drapery, which adheres to the body, revealing its shape, seems to be in movement, forming an arc along her legs. There seems to be a topknot or a diadem on her head directly above her forehead.

The figure is an exemplar of the ‘Artemis the Huntress’ iconographic type inspired by a statue type produced by the circle of Praxiteles, known through numerous variants and attributed to the sculptor Cephisodotus, active in the fourth century BCE (Sestieri 1941, pp. 107–128). The orientation of the figure to the left and the pose of the arms is also found in a small bronze previously in the Newton-Robinson Collection, which came from Alexandria (Léveque 1952, pp. 90–91, no. 65, pl. 33) and in another in the Museo Nazionale, Naples (inv. 6279: Sestieri 1941, p. 110, fig. 2).

This bronze is part of a group of similar statuettes of various subject preserved in the PalazzinaBorghese’s storerooms that are not mentioned in the inventories or bibliography relative to the archaeological collection. Minozzi published a receipt, dated 1773 and discovered by Gonzàlez-Palacios, for payment for work done by the goldsmith Luigi Valadier on various small bronzes described as ‘alcune figurine accomodate’ (‘a few repaired figurines’), among which she identified the present group (1993, pp. 37, 50). The receipt describes filling in missing parts and attaching the figurines to gilt wooden panels of various shape, which the author believes might have been done by Valadier himself (2019, pp. 192–195). The Artemis the Huntress was used, with three others (inv. CCXCVIII, CCLXXXIV, CCLXXXVI), as a separator for small paintings attached to a long frame. EDXRF analysis of the statuette for the exhibition Valadier. Splendore nella Roma del Settecento, held at the Galleria Borghese in 2019, confirmed its authenticity and identified the material as ternary bronze covered with a painted patina. The statuette is a cursory copy datable to the first century CE.

Giulia Ciccarello