작품 상세

After antiquity; c. 1900. "Augustus of Prima Porta." Patinated bronze. Measurements: 49 x 25 x 14 cm. Bronze sculpture that reproduces on a reduced scale the famous model preserved in the Vatican Museums, discovered in 1863 in the villa of Livia in Prima Porta (Rome). The work is inspired by the classical canon of Polyclitus Doriphorus, adopting his idealized posture and proportions. This bronze version, made around 1900, is part of the renewed interest in the classical world that characterized the collecting and artistic production of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bronze reductions of ancient sculptures made it possible to disseminate emblematic models of Greco-Roman art outside the great museums, adapting them to domestic spaces or private collections, while maintaining the symbolic and aesthetic value of the Roman original. The sculpture, which faithfully follows the aforementioned model, represents Octavian Augustus in a military attitude, wearing a richly decorated cuirass. Reliefs alluding to various Roman divinities, including Mars, god of war, are developed in it. Also, personifications of the territories conquered during his mandate appear: Hispania, Gaul, Germania and Parthia (Persian people of the border of the Euphrates that had defeated and humiliated Crassus, and that here is represented returning the banners taken from the Roman legions).