Friday, May 13, 2016

Colossal Reclining Gods of Rome

Marforio
Roman marble statue of the mid-Imperial period
Capitoline Museum

There were three famous and colossal statues of reclining water-gods in Rome during the Renaissance. The most venerable was called Marforio. It had survived  possibly above ground  from ancient times and was "a landmark in Rome recognized by the late twelfth century." Other recorded designations include Danube ; Jove Panario, Marfoi ; Marfoli ; Mars ; Nar ; Neptune ; Ocean ; Rhine ; Tiber. 

Domenico de Rossi
Marforio
1704
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jan de Bisschop
Marforio
mid-17th century
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum

Colossal statues of The Nile and The Tiber both came to light during excavations in the early 16th century. "The numerous prints of the Nile [below] which testify to the esteem with which it was regarded are also often misleading because the putti are either depicted intact or altogether removed. In reality, these putti existed only as broken fragments until repaired by Gaspare Sibilla (a commission given to him by Pope Clement XIV shortly before his death in 1774). An early theory was that there had been originally seventeen putti representing the seventeen kingdoms of Egypt watered by the Nile. The correct interpretation was that the sixteen putti clambering over the god referred to the sixteen cubits by which the river could rise in the rainy season."  


Enea Vico
Statue of the Nile at the Vatican
16th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Cherubino Alberti
Statue of the Nile at the Vatican
1576
engraving
British Museum

James Anderson
Statue of the Nile at the Vatican
ca. 1845-55
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous photographer
The Nile
early 18th century
copy - bronze statuette
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Gian Paolo Panini
Capriccio with two famous antique Roman statues
 Silenus with the Infant Bacchus (left) and the Nile (center)
ca. 1691-92
watercolor
Morgan Library, New York

The Tiber (below) was excavated in 1512 and immediately placed in the Belvedere Courtyard at the Vatican by Pope Julius II. Shortly afterwards it was paired there with The Nile, thought to be a Roman copy of a Hellenistic work brought from Alexandria in ancient times. Napoleon's armies carried both The Tiber and The Nile (but not Marforio) to Paris in the early 19th century. After Waterloo, The Nile was returned by the victorious allies to Rome, but The Tiber (incredibly) was allowed by the Pope to remain in France, ostensibly as a gesture of good will to the restored monarchy there.

Charles Nègre
Statue of the Tiber in the Gardens of the Tuileries, Paris
1859
albumen silver print
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro Santi Bartoli
Statue of the Tiber in the  Belvedere-Courtyard at the Vatican
mid-17th century
etching, engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Enea Vico
Statue of the Tiber
16th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Claude Randon
Statue of the Tiber 
1704
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jean-Nicolas Langier
Statue of the Tiber
ca. 1816-18
etching, engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Anonymous artist
 Statue of the Tiber 
after 1512
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

The drawing above contains a very early drawing of what may be the Tiber statue, and what is certainly one of the horse heads from the so-called Alexander and Bucephalus monument (now known as Castor and Pollux). That monument will appear here tomorrow, recorded at different periods in different formats, continuing this late and feeble effort to imagine these artifacts across the wide stretches of their prolonged existences. Another early view of the Tiber appears below in an engraving by Hieronymus Cock based on drawings made in Rome by Maarten van Heemskerck in the 1530s. At far right, a pair of male viewers stand in awestruck contemplation, dwarfed by the reclining figure of the Tiber.

Hieronymus Cock after Maarten van Heemskerck
Roman ruins
1552
etching
British Museum