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Some Portraits of the Flavian Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. W. Crowfoot
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Extract

Every large museum contains some portraits, which can with certainty be assigned to the Flavian period: a layman indeed can recognize the ladies of this age by the high and ugly coiffure then fashionable, but the majority of these are quite second-rate works. Not even the glamour of an imperial name will awaken much interest in such. But there are a few others really of superlative excellence which are consequently, as the commoner chronological sign-posts are wanting, assigned in most catalogues to whatever period the individual writer regards as the ‘best period’ of Roman art. Three or four of them I have ventured to select and I have added notes upon one or two others, which help to explain the group and justify further the date to which I assign them. No doubt the list could be extended considerably, but a few will perhaps suffice as a beginning, if they are typical of the best which the age could produce.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 20 , November 1900 , pp. 31 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1900

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References

page 31 note 1 See Bernoulli, Römische Ikonographie, i, p. vi. Namenlose Bildnisse oder solche, von deren uns nichts weiter als der Name bekannt ist, und die voraussetzlich keine historischen Personen darstellen, sind grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen werden. Or Visconti, , Iconographie, i, p. 27Google Scholar, (ed. 1811), and contrast with these the principles laid down by Winter, , Jahrbuch des Instituts, 1890, p. 151Google Scholar foll.

page 32 note 1 Both stand together in the Uffizi at Florence: the Museum numbers are 319, 321. See Dütschke, , Die antiken Marmorbildwerke der Uffizien in Florenz, 1878Google Scholar. Nos. 511 ‘Greek marble,’ 514 ‘;? Greek marble’;; also Amelung, , Führer durch die Antiken in Florenz, 1897Google Scholar, Nos. 144,‘Erste Kaiserzeit’—no reason being given for this—No. 149. ‘Later.’ Professor Milani has been so kind as to send me the following valuable notes upon the two busts in question. ‘Il n. 319,’ he writes, ‘èsenza dubbio di marmo greco e la base di marmo bigio è pure antica, ma è impossibile, io credo, di stabilire se appartenga o no al busto. Data la ottima conservazione del busto è presumibile che gli appartenga Il n. 321 è di una qualità di marmo che non sapiei bene determinare. La grana non è salina come nell' altro busto, ma saccaroide simile al lunese.’ If Professor Milani's presumption about the basis were correct, the basis of bigio would make an interesting addition to the aesthetic environment of our work, consistent with other elements noted below.

page 32 note 2 Compare for example the account of Rubellius Plautus given by Tacitus, , Annals, xiii, c. 59Google Scholar.

page 33 note 1 For the first see Bernoulli; for the second, Furtwängler, Die. Sammlung Sabouroff, No. xliii, or Brunn und Arndt, Griechische und römische Porträts, Nos. 19—20.

page 34 note 1 As on the Copenhagen ‘Livia.’ Helbig, . Röm. Mitthéil, 1887Google Scholar. Brunn-Arndt. 6—7.

page 34 note 2 See Gatti, in Bullettino Comunale. Roma. 1887, p. 52—56Google Scholar, Tav. iii.—a good reproduction: a bad one published by Heydemann, in Lutzow's, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 1890; p. 154Google Scholar. Helbig, , Führer (1899)Google Scholar, No. 605.

page 34 note 3 Contrast with this the fine Berlin ‘Marcellus’ head, splendidly published by Kekulé, , Ueber einen bisher Marcellus-gennanten Kopf. 54 Winkelmannsprogramm, Berlin, 1894, esp. p. 14Google Scholar. In a note upon Pliny, H. N. xxxv. 153Google Scholar, Miss Sellers says ‘from the living model; the invention attributed to Lysistratos has nothing whatever to do with the custom of taking masks from the face [sic] of the dead.’ (The elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of Art, Jex-Blake and Sellers, London, 1896, p. 176). There is nothing in the text to justify the word ‘living,’ though of course Miss Sellers is right in distinguishing the artist's practice from the undertaker's.

page 34 note 4 I cannot see the ‘distinction’ which Helbig finds in this head.

page 35 note 1 See Bernoulli, i, p. 207, 8 (a line drawing), a worthless reproduction in Pistoiesi, , Il. Vaticano, iv. Tav. 28Google Scholar, 2, a character study(!) in Braun ‘Die Ruinen und Museen Roms’ Braunschweig, 1854, p. 253, Köhler, in Archoeolog. Zeitung, 1864Google Scholar, Anzeiger, p. 156; Helbig, 1899, No. 41.

page 35 note 2 Notizie degli Scavi, 1880, Tav. v. (Lanciani).

page 36 note 1 Bernoulli, ii Taf. ix, p. 130, 1. Brunn-Arndt, 177, 8, Helbig, 1899, No. 110 (earlier ed. 561).

page 36 note 2 Annali, 1849, p. 407–409, (Brunn), poor illustrations in Monumenti, v. 7. Benndorf und Schöne, , Die antiken Bildwerke des lateranensi- sehen Museums, Leipzig, 1867, p. 205Google Scholar, foll. Baumeister's Denkmäler i., fig. 29. Wickhoff, , Die Wiener Genesis, p. 30Google Scholar, foll., with a note from Henzen. Helbig, (1899), 675–7.

page 37 note 1 Not inappropriately compared by Jacobsen, with rococo art. Det gamle Glyptothek paa Ny-Carlsberg, 1898, p. 68Google Scholar. There is a relief in the museum of the Evangelical School at Smyrna dedicated to a certain Artemon, which shows prercisely the same careful dryness as is found in some portraits at Rome signed by Aphrodisians, and therefore proves that the style was probably native to Asia Minor.

page 38 note 1 Abhandlungen der phil-hist, Cl. der sächs. Gesellsch. der Wissenschaften, vi., 1874.

page 39 note 1 Von Hartel, und Wickhoff, , Die Wiener Genesis, Wien, 1895, pp. 43Google Scholar, 44, and passim.

page 39 note 2 Intermezzi, Leipzig, 1896, p. 48.

page 39 note 3 This accounts to some extent for the differences between Attic and Italian work, which has been the subject of several recent comments. (Fürtwängler, , Die Sammlung Sabouroff, Berlin, 1893Google Scholar, Taf. xlvi, Brunn und Arndt, Griechische und römische Porträts. Notes on Nos. 17–20, 245, 310, 381–390.) Another formal difference will be mentioned later. The distinction is the more curious because so many inscriptions have been found in Italy bearing Athenian names (Overbeck, , Schriftqucllen, 221–4Google Scholar, foll.). A strange atmosphere and new conditions, new demands, will perhaps account also in some measure for this. Helbig seems to exaggerate matters, when he claims for Puteoli a character distinct from that of Rome, and closer to Hellenistic, models, (La Collection Barocco, Munich, 1892, No. lxxiii)Google Scholar; Puteoli or some other Campanian town may for a short time have stood to Rome as Glasgow does to London,, but-there is no evidence to prove it.

page 39 note 4 Mau, , Geschichte der decoratveen Wandmalerei in Pompeii, Berlin, 1882, p. 448Google Scholar, foll. Wickhoff, op. cit. p. 69, foll. It seems misleading, however, to speak of the style as ‘impressionist’; any one who expects to find the style, say, of Meunier, foreshadowed in Flavian sculpture, will, I think, be somewhat disappointed!

page 40 note 1 Compare such works as the Minetia Polla in the Museo dei Therme at Rome, (Notizie degli Scavi, 1880, p. 127Google Scholar, foll.) or the statue of Fundilius Doctus at Copenhagen, (Det gamle Glyptothek, 1898Google Scholar, No. 393, Notizie, 1887, p. 196, foll.). The complicated decorative folds of the last are very characteristic of the time.

page 40 note 2 For an admirable criticism of this great work I cannot do better than refer to Köhler, 's article in the Annali, 1863Google Scholar, and to a few happy sentences by Kekulé, op. cit. supra, p. 15. For the Pompeius see Helbig, to whom the certain identification is due, in Röom. Mitthcil., 1886, and Théodore Reinach, in Revue Archéologique, 1890Google Scholar.

page 41 note 1 It is this rapidity alone which saves these and other ‘realists’ from the reproach flung by Leighton at German painters like Denner and Seibold, ‘The man, who can cheerfully devote absorbing care through countless hours to the minute rendering of an undelightful network of pock-marks and pimples, has no emotions to communicate to you that you are anxious to share.’

page 41 note 2 The majority, perhaps, of the Herms scattered about our museums are simply truncated statues; sometimes when we have both the figure and the Herm left, e.g., the Anakroons and the Demosthenes, this can be demonstrated, in other cases, e.g., the Perikles, it may be reasonably inferred, as the Kresilas inscription leaves the question still open. The Kosmetai at Athens, on the other hand, offer a row of portraits of men, who were never represented in any other way, and on all of them we find the same square pose as upon the original Herms, representing mythological creations. The free pose, therefore, of many of our Herms does not contradict the principles laid down in the text. Similarly I would explain apparent Hellenistic busts like those from Herculaneum at Naples as merely mutilated statues: the expressions on these faces seem to my eye absolutely to demand monumental full figures. The whole question is raised again by the procedure of the I talian sculptors of the 15th century, who affected a new type of shoulder bust.

page 41 note 3 Borrowed from one whose authority will be universally recognised—Hildebrand, Adolf, Das Problem der Form, Strassburg, 1893, p. 23Google Scholar, foll.

page 42 note 1 Apropos of the busts of the Haterii, Benndorf and Schöne (op. cit., p. 209), remark ‘Ihre ganze aüssere Form schon weist darauf hin, dass sie ursprünglich nicht für Marmor, Sondern für einen Stoff erfunden ist, der “getrieben” werden kann. Das grössere oder kleinere Stück Brust, das dem Kopf angefügt ist, Wird dünn gearbeitet und unterhöhlt, und inwendig bleibt eine. Stütze die zuweilen ganz frei losgearbeitet wird. All diess wäre in Marmor eine grosse und unnöthige Arbeit gewesen, hätte man nicht ein Interesse daran gehabt, der Büste gerade diese traditionelle Form zu geben.' Against this antiquarian deduction I would urge that there is a very practical reason for the hollowing of the bust: if it was to rest upon a small basis with a yet smaller tablet, it was absolutely necessary to distribute the weight in this way. The form of the tablet and the basis, moreover, are probably not derived from the waxen imagines: it is surely more reasonable to see the original form of the latter in a work like the Septumius (Brunn-Arndt. No. 521), than in the monument of the Haterii, which is at least two centuries later!

page 42 note 2 von Gaertringeu, Hiller, Thera. Berlin, 1899, Taf. 17, p. 224Google Scholar.

page 42 note 3 Especially with such a bust as that attributed by Bode to Antonio Rosellino—Italienische Portrait-sculpluren des xv. Jahrhunderls Berlin, Taf. iv., or that by Mino da Fiesole, ib. Taf. xiii.