![Hestia Giustiniani](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Hestia_Giustiniani.jpg)
The Giustiniani Hestia is a finely-executed marble
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
, a perhaps
Hadrian
Hadrian (; la, Caesar Trâiānus Hadriānus ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He was born in Italica (close to modern Santiponce in Spain), a Roman ''municipium'' founded by Italic settlers in Hispania B ...
ic Roman copy of a Greek bronze of about 470 BCE, now in the
Torlonia Collection The Torlonia Collection (Italian: ''Collezione Torlonia'') is a private art collection of 620 Ancient Greek and Roman art works assembled by the noble Torlonia family of Rome, Italy. It has been called "the greatest private collection of ancient Rom ...
(see
Torlonia Museum
The Torlonia Museum ( it, Museo Torlonia; not identical with the Villa Torlonia on the Via Nomentana) was a museum in Rome, which housed the Torlonia Collection (''Collezione Torlonia'') of ancient sculptures.
History
The collection of 620 mar ...
), Rome, but named for its early owner, marchese
Vincenzo Giustiniani
Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (13 September 1564 – 27 December 1637) was an aristocratic Italian banker, art collector and intellectual of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, known today largely for the Giustiniani art collection, assembled ...
. It is the only known Early Classical bronze that was reproduced at full size in marble for a Roman collection: Roman taste ran more towards the
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
baroque.
Description
Winckelmann Winckelmann may refer to:
* George Winckelmann (1884–1962), a Finnish lawyer and a diplomat
* Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), a German art historian and archaeologist
* Johann Just Winckelmann
Johann Just Winckelmann (19 August 1620 ...
cited the ''Hestia Giustiniani'' as an example of the austere early stage of
Classical Greek sculpture
Classical Greek sculpture has long been regarded as the highest point in the development of sculptural art in Ancient Greece, becoming almost synonymous with "Greek sculpture". The ''Canon'', a treatise on the proportions of the human body writte ...
. For female figures, early fifth-century sculptors mostly gave up the crinkly sleeved ''
chiton
Chitons () are marine molluscs of varying size in the class Polyplacophora (), formerly known as Amphineura. About 940 extant and 430 fossil species are recognized.
They are also sometimes known as gumboots or sea cradles or coat-of-mail s ...
'', which had been popular in the later sixth century BCE, and returned to the sleeveless ''
peplos
A peplos ( el, ὁ πέπλος) is a body-length garment established as typical attire for women in ancient Greece by circa 500 BC, during the late Archaic and Classical period. It was a long, rectangular cloth with the top edge folded down a ...
'' with heavy, dominantly vertical folds not unlike the fluting of a column. With the body so shrouded the relaxation of pose has been limited to turning the head. Several Attic or Argive sculptors have been speculatively suggested as the author of the lost original.
History
The sculpture was known in the
Giustiniani
The House of Giustiniani is the name of a prominent Italy, Italian family which originally belonged to Venice, but also established itself in Genoa, and at various times had representatives in Naples, Corsica and in the islands of the Aegean Sea, A ...
collection in
Palazzo Giustiniani, Rome, from the early 1630s, the date of a drawing made for the antiquarian
Cassiano dal Pozzo
Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588 – 22 October 1657) was an Italian scholar and patron of arts. The secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, he was an antiquary in the classicizing circle of Rome, and a long-term friend and patron of Nicolas Poussin, w ...
and was illustrated in the engraved catalogue of the Galleria Giustiniani, produced under the direction of
Joachim von Sandrart
Joachim von Sandrart (12 May 1606 – 14 October 1688) was a German Baroque art-historian and painter, active in Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age. He is most significant for his collection of biographies of Dutch and German artists the ''Te ...
in two deluxe volumes, 1635–36 and 1638 In its first appearance in a Giustiniani inventory, 1638, it was a ''"vergine vestale vestita, di marmo greco tutta antica alta palmi 9"'' (quoted by Lachenal), "a clothed
Vestal Virgin
In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals ( la, Vestālēs, singular ) were priestesses of Vesta, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame.
The Vestals were unlike any other public priesthood. They were chosen before puberty ...
, of Greek marble wholly antique, height 9 palmi." The sculpture appeared in
François Perrier, ''Segmenta nobilium signorum'' (Paris and Rome, 1638), plate lxxii. The ''Hestia'' was purchased from the Giustiniani heirs in the nineteenth century and re-erected in Palazzo Lungara, where it was described by
Ennio Quirino Visconti
Ennio Quirino Visconti (November 1, 1751 – February 7, 1818) was an Italian antiquarian and art historian, papal Prefect of Antiquities, and the leading expert of his day in the field of ancient Roman sculpture. His son, Pietro Ercole Visconti, e ...
. It was removed to the Torlonia
Villa Albani
The Villa Albani (later Villa Albani-Torlonia) is a villa in Rome, built on the Via Salaria for Cardinal Alessandro Albani. It was built between 1747 and 1767 by the architect Carlo Marchionni in a project heavily influenced by otherssuch as Gi ...
after World War II and was reinstalled in the 1990s in the courtyard of the Palazzo Torlonia in
via della Conciliazione
Via della Conciliazione (Road of the Conciliation) is a street in the Rione of Borgo within Rome, Italy. Roughly in length, it connects Saint Peter's Square to the Castel Sant'Angelo on the western bank of the Tiber River. The road was constru ...
.
Identification
Contemporary scholars are less certain about the sculpture's identification as Hestia, in part because of literary references to her imageless sanctuaries,
[Jean-Joseph Goux, "Vesta, or the Place of Being", ''Representations'' 1 (February 1983), pp. 91-107.] though a similar figure is painted on a cup at Berlin attributed to the Sosias Painter (Lachenal):
Demeter
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter (; Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food, and the fertility of the earth. Although s ...
and
Hera
In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; grc-gre, Ἥρα, Hḗrā; grc, Ἥρη, Hḗrē, label=none in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she ...
are alternative candidates. Often such attribution issues are skirted in modern scholarship by designating such sculptures simply as ''peplophoroi'' ("peplum-wearers")
Notes
{{reflist
References
Lucilla de Lachenal, ''Hestia Giustiniani''(Italian)
the Giustiniani Hestia among casts that represent the Greek canon for the British nioneteenth century.
Giustiniani Hestia (Roman copy)
Sculptures of Greek goddesses
Hestia