Details

LOT 0364

Bronze Grand Tour Statue of Augustus of Prima Porta

ITALY, CIRCA 1870 A.D.

16 in. (6.45 kg total, 40.8 cm high including stand).

Replica of marble statue of Augustus discovered in 1863 in Prima Porta, depicted in advancing pose wearing a military cuirass with mythological scenes, toga draped from the waist over the left arm, barefoot with statuette of Cupid seated on a dolphin beside his right leg; mounted on a custom-made tiered stand.

Provenance

From the private collection of a S.W. London gentleman, acquired in the 1970s.
This lot is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

Footnotes

An elegant 19th century detailed replica of the marble statue of Augustus discovered in 1863 during archaeological excavations at the Villa Livia owned by Augustus's wife, Livia Drusilla, at Prima Porta on the Via Flaminia, 12km north of Rome.
The original full-length statue portrays an idealised image of Augustus in the role of imperator, commander of military forces, in contrapposto stance derived from Greek athletic statues of the 5th century BC. This statue represents Augustus in the act of adlocutio, addressing his troops, also seen on the reverse of the dupondii of Germanicus (RIC Gaius 57). Augustus is represented as a great general, a powerful orator, eternally youthful, with the body of a Greek athlete, with a support statuette of Cupid seated on a dolphin alluding to his divine ancestry from Venus through his formal adoption by Julius Caesar.

The main element of the statue is the highly decorated cuirass with sphinx-decorated shoulder straps and paludamentum covered with figures arranged in three sections: Caelus, or sky-god at the apex; below him the sun-god Sol in his four-horse chariot and Aurora riding on the back of a female celestial personification; central section with figures of Hispania on the extreme left and another captive female, possibly Gallia, to the right; beneath, Apollo with lyre riding on a winged griffin and Diana on the back of a stag, with Tellus (Mother Earth) cradling two babies below, all framing the most important figures of the cuirass: on the right a Parthian military warrior (identified as Phraates IV) holding a Roman standard towards a helmeted and cuirassed Roman soldier accompanied by a she-wolf or dog (identified as Augustus-Aeneas, Tiberius, Mars or the personification of exercitus Romanus, the Roman army, an allusion to the return of the Roman standards in 20 BC, captured by the Parthians from the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus after his ignominious defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC. The statue thus commemorates Augustus’s victory over Parthia. Augustus made much of this, the first significant victory after Actium in 31 BC. Historical sources state that Phraates IV restored the standards to Augustus in 20 BC, although Suetonius reports that it was Tiberius who
served as the intermediary for the transfer (Tiberius 9.1).