The majestic statue of Augustus from Primaporta brings to the fore his understanding of the power of images (Figure 21.1). The work combines Greek and Roman features, idealized and specific, a calculated blend that served as an official image of the emperor. The head portrays Augustus as a young man. Following the realistic tradition of Etruscan and Roman portraiture, the features appear specific, such as the broad skull and the narrow chin, and confirm Suetonius’s description of Augustus as extremely handsome. This attractive, idealized face had become a standard image, one that Augustus used until the end of his long life, in accordance with the Greek view that portraits should function as types, not as optically faithful records.
Figure 21.1 Augustus of Primaporta, marble statue from Rome. Vatican Museums
With the body, however, the image departs from reality, for Suetonius described Augustus as rather short, even if well-proportioned. The body reproduces the stance and the heavy musculature of the “Doryphoros” of Polykleitos, a Greek work of the fifth century BC much copied by the Romans, and so connects Augustus with the idealized heroic image that Greeks projected in statues of nude athletes. But Augustus is clothed, even if the cuirass is revealingly form-fitting. His military garb specifically identifies him as a soldier and recalls his personal heroism on behalf of the Roman state. Further, the armor serves as a vehicle for details about Augustus’s military achievements. Relief sculpture on the cuirass includes the depiction of a Parthian returning captured standards to a Roman, a symbol of peace brought to the uneasy eastern frontier of the Roman Empire.
The statue may be a marble copy of a bronze original made after the Romans retrieved their standards in 20 BC. It was found in 1863 at Primaporta outside Rome in a villa that perhaps belonged to Livia, Augustus’s wife; it may have stood outdoors as a garden decoration, as stone statuary often did in Roman times.
World History
