Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This statuette depicts a young man with his toga pulled over his head, signifying that he is acting in a religious capacity. This figure may represent a Genius, a protective spirit that would have been kept along with other images in the personal shrine (lararium) of a Roman family. The man is beardless; his hair, visible under the toga, is arranged in two rows of slightly curly locks. His eyes are deep set, his nose is prominent (with some damage to the tip), and his mouth is downturned at the corners. He stands frontally, head turned slightly to the right; his toga is wrapped around a tunic, and many folds are visible in front of his torso. He holds out his left arm at waist level, but the hand, which would have held something, is missing (1). The right arm, also missing, would have extended from the body, with the hand perhaps holding a patera. His right knee, visible under the folds of cloth, is slightly bent and the foot moved back. The figure wears shoes with prominent upper pieces, best paralleled by shoes worn by priests depicted on the Ara Pacis in the late first century BCE. The toes of both feet are missing.
The back of the figure has a long crack through a section of the vertically hanging drapery. An ancient patch, roughly square, is visible on the back of his neck; the folds of the drapery are continued from the patch onto the main body of the statuette (2).
NOTES:
1. The examples in the Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine, Lyon, and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, hold boxes, perhaps with incense, in their left hands, while their right hands are turned palm down to place an offering. See S. Boucher and S. Tassinari, Bronzes antiques du Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine a Lyon I: Inscriptions, statuaire, vaisselle (Lyon 1976) 85, no. 73; and D. G. Mitten and S. F. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical World, exh. cat., The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; City Art Museum of St. Louis; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Mainz, 1967) 253, no. 243. An example in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, inv. no. 54.2329, holds out its right hand, palm upward, perhaps to grasp a patera; see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Genius no. 9, for a Genius holding a patera in his left hand and a scroll in his right. Others hold cornucopiae in their left hands (LIMC Genius nos. 1-3).
2. Compare a similar figure with a different hairstyle but also with a rectangular patch on its back, published in A. N. Zadoks-Josephus Jitta, W. J. T. Peters, and W. A. van Es, Roman Bronze Statuettes from the Netherlands 1: Statuettes Found North of the Limes (Groningen, 1967) 14-17, no. 8.
Lisa M. Anderson
