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DIANA'S TORSO IN POREČ
Predrag Vuković
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Sažetak
Almost all that we know about the types and styles of classical Greek and Roman sculpture depends on the identification of copies. An exceptionally large number of surviving Roman sculptures are Classical, Late Classical or Hellenistic copies of Greek originals. Since the second century B.C. the greatest Greek artists worked for Rome, providing the market with marble and bronze sculpture crafted in the best techniques and styles for their Roman clients in a wide range of types: from nobilia opera, copies and versions of famous works by the best artists, to ornamenta, i.e. decorative sculpture. We should distinguish between copies and variations of sculptural models and types: the former concentrating on a certain individual item, usually made in the past, the latter marked by a more general formal and iconographic memory.
The Greek component in Roman art must be seen as an integral, even regulative factor, especially in the presentation of human figures. The Roman studios in which copies were made created a broad spectrum of "Greek" sculpture, from recognizable copies to pale imitations. Studying the torso of the goddess Diana in Poreč, made of white marble, dated in the first century A.D., one must ponder the relations of original and copy, (noticing a freer approach to the iconographic theme), ways of representing certain standard types, the quality of execution of the female body, the transfer from one medium to another, all of which involves a broad spectrum of possible variations starting from a certain prototype which can be changed several times. The surviving fragment of this sculpture represents Diana in movement, her body gently rotated, with her right breast exposed, dressed in a doubly girt hiton arranged in rich folds. The head, arms and legs below her thighs have not survived, nor have any potential animal figures of the composition. Although so much of it is missing this sculpture shows remarkable
quality of execution and represents a unique specimen of classical Roman cult sculpture quite rare in the northern part of the Croatian Adriatic coast. The torso of Diana in Poreč is undoubtedly the relic of a Roman copy and a Late Classical variation of Artemis of the Versailles type. In that period numerous new types of sculpture were created by the copyists of the Roman Empire. The goddessArtemis, or Diana, was first represented as a huntress in the fourth century B.C. Artemis as running huntress, accompanied by a dog or deer - and owing to several related copies known as the Versailles type - dates from the middle of the same century. Its original is attributed to the sculptor Leochares. This sculpture of a partly nude female body is thus a combination of a sculptural type marked by Late Classical stylistic traits, and of the iconographic (narrative) type of a running virgin huntress-goddess. The preference for a "sub-classical" manner in the statues of gods and goddesses is a reflection of the Roman taste and cultural choices especially characteristic of the first century. The Poreč sculpture of Diana is of Greek provenance, made either in a Greek studio on Italic soil or even more probably in Greece herself from where it was imported. The presence of a work of such high quality in Poreč testifies to the presence of an afluent strata of Roman citizens in Istria which increased the import of art works and intensified their local production.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
151173
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.12.1995.
Posjeta: 816 *