Dear friends of the historical and cultural background of
ancient coins!
Today I want to share too one of my favourite coins together with some results of my research.
The coin:Moesia inferior,
Tomis,
Philip II &
Serapis, AD 247-249
AE 26, 13.84g
obv. M IOVΛIOC ΦIΛIΠΠOC /
KAICAP The
confronted busts of
Philip II, draped and
cuirassed, bare-headed, r., and of
Serapis,
draped and wearing
kalathos, l.
rev. MHTPOΠ ΠONT - O - V TOMEΩC
Hera, in
chiton and
himation, stg. frontal,
head l., resting with raised l. hand on long
sceptre and holding in extended r. hand
pateraref. a)
AMNG I/2, 3591 (1 ex., Odessa
Mus.)
b)
Varbanov 5813 (cites
AMNG 3591)
rare, VF, concentric traces of
smoothing process
The depiction of
Hera on the
rev. is exceptional. In her nearly transparent
chiton she looks rather like Aphrodite than the venerable Queen of Heaven. According to
Pat Lawrence it is possible, that the
rev. shows a variant of
Hera Borghese. This statue too was discussed for a long time wether she depicts
Hera or Aphrodite. So it was supposed that she was a copy of
Aphrodite Euploia from Amyklai.
History of the statue:The archetype of the so-called
Hera Borghese was unearthed AD 1834 in the Villa dei Bruttii Praesentes at the Monte Calvo in the
Sabine Mountains, brought to
Rome and exhibited in the Villa Borghese. Hence her name. It is the marble copy of a Greek bronze original. It is well known that the Greek usually casted their
statues from bronze, whereas the
Romans had a favour for marble and used it too for their copies of Greek bronze
statues.
In 1803 she was brought by Napoleon Bonaparte into the Louvre in
Paris. After she was given back she was bought in 1890 by Helbig for the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek in Copenhagen. Plaster casts are found in the Musei Vaticani in
Rome (Museo Chiaramonti), in the Museo Palatino in
Rome and in the Castello Aragonese Museum in Baiae.
History of Arts:According to Mette Moltensen the
Roman copy
comes from the 2nd Century AD whereas the Greek original is originated in the 2nd half of the 5th century BC, as resulted by art historical researches.
(1) Corpus (body) and garment are equal ponderously. The garment is not emphasized especially, but is fallen downwards consistently following its natural gravitation. It is carried by the same swinging movement like the corpus. This matches the perceptions of the high classic in the 2nd half of the 5th century BC. The assumption speaks for the ambit of the school of Phidias.
(2) The garment is slipped from her left shoulder. She wears only a thin
chiton, that accentuates distinctly her female body shape. This erotical touch ist the main reason for the fact that the recent scholarship interprets the statue as depiction of Aphrodite. The partial divestment of Aphrodite was already possible at the end of the 5th century.
(3) The swinging and the high classical S-shape that we could
still see at
Hera Borghese was in the middle of the 4th century replaced by a system of polarity. The rhythmizing was broken between upper and lower body. Thereby the garment takes over the structuring in the form of a
transverse pouf that no longer is caused organically by the movement of the body but is
applied from the outside.
(4) To make this new perception a
bit clearer I have added a pic of
Hera Barberini. This statue was found in the late 17th century on the Viminal
hill in
Rome and got the name from its first owner, cardinal Francesco Barberini. Today the
Hera Barberini stands in the Musei Vaticani (Museo Pio-Clementino). You can see that the garment here has got a much stronger accentuation as at
Hera Borghese. Here you can see the pouf that arranged upper and lower body. It is supposed that the Greek original
comes from Alkamenes (died around 400 BC), a scholar of Phidias, who has created important sculptures for
Athens and Olympia. With him we are already in the time after high classic.
Note:The
German archaeologist Wolfgang Helbig (1839-1915) was for 25 years in
Rome the representative of the Danish brewer Carl Jacobsen, the founder of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek. In this time he bought more of 950 sculptures and
antiquities for
his collections in Copenhagen. The time was advantageous for him. By the huge building projects after the
Italian unification important ancient findings were made and at the same time highly indebted aristocratic families
had to sell their
collections.
Literature:(1) Ina Altripp, Athenastatuen der Spätklassik und
des Hellenismus, Arbeiten zur
Archäologie, Böhlau Verlag Köln 2010
(2) Adolf B.Borbein, Die griechische Statue
des 4.Jh. n.Chr. Form-analytische
Untersuchungen zur Kunst der Nachklassik, in "Jahrbuch drer deutschen
Archaeologischen Instituts, Bd. 88, 1973, books.google.de
(3) A. Delivorrias, Der statuarische Typus der sog.
Hera Borghese in: H.
Beck – P. C.
Bol (Hrsg.), Polykletforschungen (
Berlin 1993), 221ff.,
Abb. 4, 7, 9 Zenon
(4) Mette Moltesen,
Catalogue Imperial
Rome II.
Statues. Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek
(2002), 42f., Kat.Nr. 1 Zenon
(5) R. Neudecker, Die Skulpturenausstattung römischer Villen in Italien (Mainz
1988), 181, Kat.Nr. 35, 2 Zenon
(6) Karen Schoch, Die doppelte Aphrodite - alt und neu bei griechischen Kultbilden,
Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2009 books.google.de
(7)
WikipediaI have added
(1) A pic of
Hera Borghese from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek in Copenhagen
(2) A pic of
Hera Barberini from the Musei Vaticani (Museo Pio-Clementino)
Best regards