Pseudo-Seneca

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Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now generally identified as an imaginative portrait of Hesiod (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples)
Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, now generally identified as an imaginative portrait of Hesiod (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples)

The so-called Pseudo-Seneca is a Roman bronze bust of the late first century BCE that was discovered at Herculaneum in 1754, the finest example of about two dozen examples depicting the same face. It was originally believed to depict Seneca the Younger, the famous Roman philosopher; however, modern scholars agree it is likely a fictitious portrait. It is thought that the original example was a lost Greek bronze of ca. 200 BCE. The bust is conserved in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

The type of this bust was first given its identification as a "genuine" contemporary portrait Seneca in an Antwerp republication of Fulvio Orsini's Imagines et Elogia Virorum Illustrium et Eruditor ex Antiquis Lapidibus et Nomismatib[us]...[1] at a time when the exemplary image of the great man was more inspiring than the quality and character of the work of art that embodied it. By the seventeenth century, about a dozen examples of the intense and haggard "Pseudo-Seneca" had been discovered, and as many more have been discovered since.[2]

Following the example of Cicero, who had decorated his study with busts, or the imagines illustrium that peopled the villa at Sorrento of Pollius Felix, described by Statius[3] gentlemen and scholars were avid to have examples of the great writers of Classical Antiquity constantly before their eyes: "the learned all over Europe looked with awe and devotion at the Stoic philosopher, emaciated, even uncouth, disdainful of the luxury and corruption of Nero's court, and soon to commit suicide".[4]

Of the version of the Pseudo-Seneca— as it is still widely known— illustrated above, the outstanding quality was quickly recognized by Winckelmann.[5] An engraving of it was published in the magnificently-produced series of folios that appeared under royal patronage, Le Antichità di Ercolano (vol. V, 1767).

In 1813 an image of Seneca was found on an inscribed herm portrait, which showed quite different features[6]. It was first reidentified as a fictitious portrait meant for Hesiod by Gisela Richter. Most scholars now follow her identification.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ (Rome) 1570. The identification as "Seneca" was made by Gallaeus [Theodor Galle], Illustrium Imagines ex Antiquis Marmoribus Nomismatib[us] et Gemmis Expressae... (Antwerp 1598). Noted by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (1981), p 52 and note 67.
  2. ^ Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (1981), p 52.
  3. ^ Silvae 2.2, discussed by Claudia J. Hough, "The Surrentine Villa of Pollius Felix" (on-line text).
  4. ^ Haskell and Penny 1981:52.
  5. ^ In a letter of 1764.
  6. ^ Now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

[edit] References

  • Prinz, Wolfram 1973. "The Four Philosophers by Rubens and the Pseudo-Seneca in Seventeenth-Century Painting" The Art Bulletin 55.3 (September 1973), pp. 410-428. "...one feels that it may just as well have been the Greek writer Hesiod..."
  • Robertson, Martin Review of G, Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks The Burlington Magazine 108.756 (March 1966), pp 148-150. "...with Miss Richter, I accept the identification as Hesiod"
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