The Giustiniani Hestia is a finely-executed marble

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

, a perhaps

Hadrian Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples, Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, Aelia '' ...

ic Roman copy of a Greek bronze of about 470 BC, now in the

Torlonia Collection The Torlonia Collection (Italian: ''Collezione Torlonia'') is a private art collection of 620 Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from ...

(see

Torlonia Museum The Torlonia Museum (; not identical with the Villa Torlonia (Rome), Villa Torlonia on the Via Nomentana) was a museum in Rome, which housed the Torlonia Collection (''Collezione Torlonia'') of ancient sculptures. History The collection of 620 ...

), Rome, but named for its early owner, marchese

Vincenzo Giustiniani Vincenzo Giustiniani (13 September 1564 – 27 December 1637) was an aristocratic Italian banker, art collector and intellectual of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, known today largely for the Giustiniani art collection, assembled at the ...

. It is the only known Early Classical bronze that was reproduced at full size in marble for a Roman collection: Roman taste ran more towards the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

baroque.

Description

Winckelmann cited the ''Hestia Giustiniani'' as an example of the austere early stage of

Classical Greek sculpture Classical Greek sculpture has long been regarded as the highest point in the development of Ancient Greek sculpture. Classical Greece covers only a short period in the history of Ancient Greece, but one of remarkable achievement in several field ...

. For female figures, early fifth-century sculptors mostly gave up the crinkly sleeved ''

chiton Chitons () are marine molluscs of varying size in the class Polyplacophora ( ), formerly known as Amphineura. About 940 extant and 430 fossil species are recognized. They are also sometimes known as sea cradles or coat-of-mail shells or suck ...

'', which had been popular in the later sixth century BCE, and returned to the sleeveless ''

peplos A peplos () is a body-length garment established as typical attire for women in ancient Greece by , during the late Archaic Greece, Archaic and Classical Greece, Classical period. It was a long, rectangular cloth with the top edge folded down ab ...

'' with heavy, dominantly vertical folds not unlike the fluting of a column. With the body so shrouded the relaxation of pose has been limited to turning the head. Several Attic or Argive sculptors have been speculatively suggested as the author of the lost original.

History

The sculpture was known in the

Giustiniani The House of Giustinian or Giustiniani was a prominent Italian family which originally belonged to Venice, but also established itself in Genoa, and at various times had representatives in Naples, Canary Islands, Corsica and in the islands of the ...

collection in Palazzo Giustiniani, Rome, from the early 1630s, the date of a drawing made for the antiquarian

Cassiano dal Pozzo Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588 – 22 October 1657) was an Italian scholar and patron of arts. The secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, he was an antiquary in the classicizing circle of Rome, and a long-term friend and patron of Nicolas Poussin ...

and was illustrated in the engraved catalogue of the Galleria Giustiniani, produced under the direction of

Joachim von Sandrart Joachim von Sandrart (12 May 1606 – 14 October 1688) was a German Baroque art-historian and painter, active in Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age. He is most significant for his collection of biographies of Dutch and German artists the '' ...

in two deluxe volumes, 1635–36 and 1638 In its first appearance in a Giustiniani inventory, 1638, it was a ''"vergine vestale vestita, di marmo greco tutta antica alta palmi 9"'' (quoted by Lachenal), "a clothed

Vestal Virgin In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals (, singular ) were priestesses of Vesta, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame. The Vestals were unlike any other public priesthood. They were chosen before puberty from several s ...

, of Greek marble wholly antique, height 9 palmi." The sculpture appeared in François Perrier, ''Segmenta nobilium signorum'' (Paris and Rome, 1638), plate lxxii. The ''Hestia'' was purchased from the Giustiniani heirs in the nineteenth century and re-erected in Palazzo Lungara, where it was described by

Ennio Quirino Visconti Ennio Quirino Visconti (November 1, 1751 – February 7, 1818) was a Roman politician, antiquarian, and art historian, papal Prefect of Antiquities, and the leading expert of his day in the field of ancient Roman sculpture. His son, Pietro Ercole ...

. It was removed to the Torlonia

Villa Albani The Villa Albani (later Villa Albani-Torlonia) is a villa in Rome, built on the Via Salaria for Cardinal Alessandro Albani. It was built between 1747 and 1767 by the architect Carlo Marchionni in a project heavily influenced by otherssuch as Gi ...

after World War II and was reinstalled in the 1990s in the courtyard of the Palazzo Torlonia in

via della Conciliazione Via della Conciliazione ("Road of the Conciliation") is a street in the Rione of Borgo within Rome, Italy. Roughly in length, it connects Saint Peter's Square to the Castel Sant'Angelo on the western bank of the Tiber River. The road was constr ...

Identification

Contemporary scholars are less certain about the sculpture's identification as Hestia, in part because of literary references to her imageless sanctuaries,Jean-Joseph Goux, "Vesta, or the Place of Being", ''Representations'' 1 (February 1983), pp. 91-107. though a similar figure is painted on a cup at Berlin attributed to the Sosias Painter (Lachenal):

Demeter In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Demeter (; Attic Greek, Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric Greek, Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Twelve Olympians, Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over cro ...

and

Hera In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; ; in Ionic Greek, Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Oly ...

are alternative candidates. Often such attribution issues are skirted in modern scholarship by designating such sculptures simply as ''peplophoroi'' ("peplum-wearers")

Notes

{{reflist

References

Lucilla de Lachenal, ''Hestia Giustiniani''
(Italian)

the Giustiniani Hestia among casts that represent the Greek canon for the British nioneteenth century.

Giustiniani Hestia (Roman copy) Sculptures of Greek goddesses Hestia