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. 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'' 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 collection in

Palazzo Giustiniani Palazzo Giustiniani may refer to: * Palazzo Giustiniani, Rome, palace in Rome, Italy * Palazzo Giustiniani Businello The Palazzo Giustiniani Businello is Gothic-style palace located on the Grand Canal, in the Sestiere of San Polo, adjacent to the ...

, 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 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, 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 after World War II and was reinstalled in the 1990s in the courtyard of the Palazzo Torlonia in via della Conciliazione.

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