An exquisite image of deep melancholy. From the late 30s of the second century A. D.
44 While the author of the first head of Sabina was an unpretentious craftsman, the other bust of the empress is an unquestioned masterpiece. The quality and effect induced even an archaeologist (who probably never saw the piece itself) to doubt its authenticity, but nothing can be more wrong. Abundant traces of concretions provide physical proof of the authenticity, and the style and the carving could not be the work of any other time than slightly before the death of Sabina’s husband in 138. The bust must be a posthumous portrait, but no exact replicas are known. The delicate mixture of traces of old age with an evocation of a fragile, perishable young beauty say much about what we know of Sabina. Trajan’s niece was married in 100 to Hadrian as an early step toward her husband’s succession. Their marriage cannot have been happy, and the sculptor quietly evokes the memory of a wounded rose. Sabina, created Augusta and granted the honor of coinage in 128, wears a diadem here with delicate tendril ornamentation, which elevates her to a posthumous apotheosis among the goddesses. Juno comes to mind, but Sabina lacks the goddess’s aspiration for command. The sculptor expressed much less the shy and retiring empress’s personality than he was inspired by the general mood of the times, also evoked at its best (what irony!) in the sentimentalized image of An-tinous, the young favorite of her husband.
45 The portrait of Antinous (110/ 12-130) falls outside the well-established iconographic series. This is not because of the over life-size scale, but because our head is clearly very provincial, coming from Asia Minor, though not from Antinous’s native Bithynia in the northwest but rather from the southwest. The portrait is clearly posthumous, the result of Hadrian’s extravagant mourning for his lost favorite. Some loyal subjects must have exercized their zeal with a delay suitable for their provincialism. The fleshy, dreamlike beauty of this utterly unathletic youth is the hallmark of Hadrian’s philhellenism, but here it falls into uninspired banality. The eyes are plastically indicated, as is common for the portraits done from the beginning of the l40’s under the reign of Antoninus Pius. The provincial craftsman is ahead of his time in his neglect of the anatomical structure of his subject, allowing the cold nature of the marble to prevail.
46 The poor preservation of this head of a young boy makes it difficult to appreciate fully. Even originally the quality of the work was less than outstanding. An artisan from Asia Minor was responsible, as is clear not only from the marble but also from the traditional pillar-like block left uncarved at the nape. He produced a youthful, unpretentious face, perhaps reflecting the sophisticated appearance of Antinous. It shows how the “divine” beauty of this boy from Asia Minor marked not only an attempt to return to classical Greek values but also became in its turn a social stereotype, an example for everyone to follow. Many upper - and middle-class men all over the Empire, from the great Athenian hommes de lettres Herodes Atticus to this unknown patron in Asia Minor, called on-sculptors to perpetuate the youthful charm of their favorites.
45. Antinous (d. 130)
This may be a posthumous, provincial sculpture. It is hardly recognizable as the favorite of the emperor Hadrian. About 140.
46. Head of a youth
From Asia Minor, an unpretentious image of a youngster in the tradition of Antinous. Prom the 30s of the second century A. D.
47. Bearded man
An attempt to present a Hadriantc intellectual with the beard and idealized appearance of a classical Greek. From the 20s or 30s of the second century A. D.
48. Head of a barbarian
Rather than a portrait, this is a genre impression produced to illustrate Trajan's conquests along the frontiers of the Empire. From the 20s of the second century A. D.
47 The head of a bearded man may once have been of good quality, but time has been hard on it. Still, in spite of the damage, it is a good representative of Hadrianic portraiture. The art of the period clearly tried to return to Greek traditions for inspiration, and so does the portrait. The sculptor attempted to make the man look like a philosopher. He turns away from the outside world as if he were erecting a fence around his own private universe. The meditative mood is enhanced by the beard, a hair fashion reintroduced to Rome by the philhellenic emperor Hadrian himself.
48 The Roman sculptor who carved this image of a subdued captive did not have any concrete personality in mind, even though it may appear individualistic to our eyes. Instead he combined some of the ethnic characteristics of northern tribes—beard, unruly hair, slightly truculent gaze—and imbued them with the nobility of the famous hellenistic statues of the vanquished Gauls from the Attalid monument of ca. 230 B. C. The modern appearance of the head is marred by insensitive retouching, but much remains from the original appearance. The purpose of such a generalized image was as part of a monument commemorating the last big expansion of the Empire undertaken by Trajan over the barbarian Dacian tribes along the lower Danube, as recorded by similar symbolic statues in his Forum at Rome.
World History
