Antiquities and Ancient Art

Provenance:

Private Collection, Germany.

Sotheby's, New York, Antiquities and Islamic Works of Art, 8 December 2000, Lot 107.

Phoenix Ancient Art, Geneva, 2005 (Phoenix Ancient Art, vol. 1, pp. 74-75, no. 55); where acquired by the present owner.

Immaculately cast in bronze, a young man is shown in an elaborately draped toga. A quintessentially Roman and symbolically charged garment, the toga is rendered here with sweeping sinus folds over the right thigh and pendulous umbo tucked in at the waist. Longer pleats run diagonally from the crown of the head at the rear, along the lowered right arm, and are drawn against the calf of the left leg. That foot wears a closed leather boot (calceus), and along with the vertical stripe running along the right side of the garment (once inlaid, perhaps in silver) indicates the wearer was of high rank. The back edge of the garment is pulled up to cover the neck and partially veil the head (capite velato), a pious mode used by officials and priests when performing religious rites. While the right arm is missing beneath the elbow, its positioning indicates that it was once outstretched and proffering a patera, a shallow vessel used to pour libations. The left hand grasps a partially preserved cylindrical object, perhaps a scroll or staff.

The beardless youth has a fleshy oval face dominated by large eyes with deeply drilled pupils and exhibiting traces of silver gilding. The coiffure visible is made up of a thick fringe of comma-shaped locks, reminiscent of a member of the Julio-Claudian family and perhaps even young Nero. The small scale of the statuette indicates that it was a ‘genius’ – a representation of an official or member of the imperial family that would have been worshipped in aristocratic domestic contexts. A remarkably similar example in Baltimore (Walters Art Museum, inv. no. 54.2329) has been plausibly identified as Nero, and the two statuettes surely served the same function in private devotion to the imperial family.