ARTEMIS / DIANA

ROMAN WORLD, 2nd CENTURY AD

Sculpture in fine-grained white marble of which two fragments remain: the torso and the base with the feet and traces of a support and an animal on the ground. The goddess wears a short tunic, knee-length, with a V-neckline and a thin strap holding her breasts: the weight is supported by the right leg, while the left is brought slightly forward and discarded. The left arm, preserved up to the elbow, is coplanar with the torso, while the right, lost, must have originally been raised, as attested by the asymmetries of the figure. A flap of the cloak falls over the right shoulder. On the base, in marble of the same type, the right leg supported in its entirety is preserved up to the knee, while only the tip of the left leg can be seen. Behind the right leg is a tree-shaped support, in front of which is part of the body of an animal, probably a hunting dog. H. statue 51. 5 cm; H. base 35 cm. Max. width base 35.5 cm.

The type of dress of the goddess, her footwear (hunting boots), the iconographic scheme and the presence of the dog allow us to identify in this statue an image of the goddess Artemis / Diana as a huntress (a repertoire of images of the goddess in E. Simon, Artemis/Diana , in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae II, 1984). For the position of the figure, a comparison is provided by a statuette from the Capitoline Museums (inv. S720): M. Papini, 4. Statuette of Diana , in Le sculture del Palazzo Nuovo, Musei Capitolini 2, Milan 2018, pp. 36-37, citing the “production of images of Diana of the imperial age of medium quality, which, inferior to the life, without forming a homogeneous series of copies/replicas, a sign of a concrete underlying archetype, present the goddess without orienting itself towards a formal lexicon that is too well definable”.

Origin

Private Collection