Today, on Photo Friday, Susan Sanders gives us some beautiful photos of the second century BC Hellenistic Prince, an over life size bronze sculpture found on the ground floor of the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.
Since its discovery in 1885, on the slopes of the Quirinal Hill where it (perhaps) stood in the Baths of Constantine, the sculpture has been variously identified as Philip V of Macedon, Perseus, Alexander Balas, and more vaguely, a hero, a general, and Agrippa. Despite all these attributions, scholars have not settled on an identification but instead of concentrated on understanding what this sculpture–with its rippling muscles and well-defined contours–might have meant to those who gazed upon it in Rome in the second century BC.
German scholar Paul Zanker reminds us that this beautiful bronze would have seemed shockingly Greek (and shockingly naked) to Romans when it went on display shortly afer its creation in the second half of the second century BC. In his book, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Zanker says:
When the splendid bronze statue honoring a great general was displayed in Rome, some time before the middle of the second century BC, the total nudity of the figure must have been extremely disturbing to most Romans.
Why the shock and awe? Romans of the second century BC were not portrayed nude in art. It simply wasn’t done. Rather, a Roman honored with a public likeness would most often be depicted wearing a toga, the symbol of his status and achievement in Rome’s competitive political world. In fact, to the average Roman in the second century BC, nudity was a Greek perversion and the habits of such decadent foreigners were to be avoided.
So who then is this Greek-icizing bronze figure and what does he want us to know about him when we gaze upon his abundance of bare skin? Zanker maintains that the absence of a crown clearly demonstrates that he’s a Roman who forged across cultural boundaries before the rest of his peers.
His choice of pose is meant to remind us of the most famous of all Greeks. With his weight thrown heavily onto one leg and his torso and arms spiraling around the staff on which he leans, the figure is reminiscent of a famous portrait of Alexander the Great made by the all-star sculptor, Lysippus in the 4th century BC.
Thus, Zanker concludes that this is a portrait of a Roman who wants us to admire him for the reasons that Alexander was admired: we are to gaze upon his god-like physique and to understand that he is a man of military prowess and superhuman achievement akin to that of his hero, Alexander.
