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Statuette of a personified city: Roma or perhaps Constantinopolis
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Statuette of a personified city: Roma or perhaps Constantinopolis
Bronze, cast solid
Height: 6.5cm
Museum number: L122
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 449
Not on display
Curatorial note
A female figure in a long, girt, robe and a mantle, the end of which appears over the left shoulder, is enthroned holding a shaft vertically in the left hand and an orb in the right. The right, or extended leg is bare from ankle to knee, over which the edge of the undergarment is draped: two incised lines are used to indicate sandal(s) on the exposed foot. Details of the folds of the drapery are partly cast, partly added by incision at finishing. The head was hollow cast separately and fitted on to the neck over the boss which remains.
This small figurine is late Roman, probably late fourth or early fifth century AD at the earliest, and from an ornamental attachment (compare the our personified cities in silver from the Esquiline Treasure in the British Museum1). The identification as a city-goddess is based on the iconography of Roman Imperial coins of the fourth and fifth centuries which feature Roma and, to a lesser extent, Constantinopolis, on their reverses. These representations all derive something from the colossal, porphry cult statue2 of Roma in the temple of Venus and Roma (in Rome) as rebuilt by Maxentius after a fire in 307 AD.
On a large gold medallion of Valens (364-378 A.D)3, one of Gratianus4 (375-383), Honorius5 (395-423) and silver coins of the period6, there is a frontal view of a Roma which vaguely recalls the long tradition of the Amazon type popularized on aes of Nero and his successors and revived as a contorniate reverse in the fourth century (compare with BMCCRE, I, pls.43, nos. 1, 2, 10; 45, no. 4; 46, no. 4, etc.). Roma holds the orb without Victoriola or cross and the reversed spear; the cult throne is seen, but the shield found with the statuary type has vanished. The mantle is wrapped so as to leave the right breast covered only by the chiton and the left knee bare. This is a very conservative harkening back to a type judged inappropriate for a freestanding cult statue - conceived under the strong influence of the second version of that statue. It is to this modification of the later Roman cult statue of Roma that this small Soane bronze belongs, with the further variation that the right, instead of the left, knee is bared, as on a figure generally called Constantinopolis which enjoys wide use on solidi (coins) from Theodosius I (379-395) and his dynastic succession, and revived under Justinus (565-578 AD: Cesano, in Studi di Numismatici, I, pp. 69ff).
The absence of head, base (with the possibility of a prow underfoot), and complete attribute in the left hand preclude positive identification of the Soane bronze as Roma rather than Constantinopolis.
1 E. Strong, Art in Ancient Rome, p. 200, figs. 569, 570; JHS, IX, 1888, p.V; JRS, XXXVII, 1947, pl. V f.
2 For the cult type on fourth century bronze coins, compare with JRS, XXXVII, 1947, pls. III, 7, 11, 14, IV, 16020.
3 Toynbee, Roman Medallions, pl. XXXVII, 2; Gnecchi, I, pl. 14, nos. 14f.
4 idem, pl. 18, no. 4.
5 idem, pl. 20, no. 1.
6 M. and S., RIC, V, pls. III, nos. 11f.; VII, nos. 8, 12, etc.
This small figurine is late Roman, probably late fourth or early fifth century AD at the earliest, and from an ornamental attachment (compare the our personified cities in silver from the Esquiline Treasure in the British Museum1). The identification as a city-goddess is based on the iconography of Roman Imperial coins of the fourth and fifth centuries which feature Roma and, to a lesser extent, Constantinopolis, on their reverses. These representations all derive something from the colossal, porphry cult statue2 of Roma in the temple of Venus and Roma (in Rome) as rebuilt by Maxentius after a fire in 307 AD.
On a large gold medallion of Valens (364-378 A.D)3, one of Gratianus4 (375-383), Honorius5 (395-423) and silver coins of the period6, there is a frontal view of a Roma which vaguely recalls the long tradition of the Amazon type popularized on aes of Nero and his successors and revived as a contorniate reverse in the fourth century (compare with BMCCRE, I, pls.43, nos. 1, 2, 10; 45, no. 4; 46, no. 4, etc.). Roma holds the orb without Victoriola or cross and the reversed spear; the cult throne is seen, but the shield found with the statuary type has vanished. The mantle is wrapped so as to leave the right breast covered only by the chiton and the left knee bare. This is a very conservative harkening back to a type judged inappropriate for a freestanding cult statue - conceived under the strong influence of the second version of that statue. It is to this modification of the later Roman cult statue of Roma that this small Soane bronze belongs, with the further variation that the right, instead of the left, knee is bared, as on a figure generally called Constantinopolis which enjoys wide use on solidi (coins) from Theodosius I (379-395) and his dynastic succession, and revived under Justinus (565-578 AD: Cesano, in Studi di Numismatici, I, pp. 69ff).
The absence of head, base (with the possibility of a prow underfoot), and complete attribute in the left hand preclude positive identification of the Soane bronze as Roma rather than Constantinopolis.
1 E. Strong, Art in Ancient Rome, p. 200, figs. 569, 570; JHS, IX, 1888, p.V; JRS, XXXVII, 1947, pl. V f.
2 For the cult type on fourth century bronze coins, compare with JRS, XXXVII, 1947, pls. III, 7, 11, 14, IV, 16020.
3 Toynbee, Roman Medallions, pl. XXXVII, 2; Gnecchi, I, pl. 14, nos. 14f.
4 idem, pl. 18, no. 4.
5 idem, pl. 20, no. 1.
6 M. and S., RIC, V, pls. III, nos. 11f.; VII, nos. 8, 12, etc.
Provenance
Unrecorded
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