Zashliapin, Boris D. Portrait of a Youth from the Hermitage Collection. To the Problem of Understanding Roman Sculptural Portraiture from the Early Imperial Period

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa177-1-14
Title Portrait of a Youth from the Hermitage Collection. To the Problem of Understanding Roman Sculptural Portraiture from the Early Imperial Period
Author email boris_z94@mail.ru
About author Zashliapin, Boris Dmitrievich — В. А., postgraduate student. Saint Petersburg State University, Universitetskaia nab., 7/9, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russian Federation.
In the section Art and Artistic Culture of the Ancient World. Archaeological Object and a Work of Art: Their Similarities and Differences DOI10.18688/aa177-1-14
Year 2017 Volume 7 Pages 128–137
Type of article RAR Index UDK 73.027.1 Index BBK 85.133(0)32
Abstract

In 1852 the Imperial Museum of the New Hermitage bought sculptures and vases from countess’s A. G. Laval’ collection in St. Petersburg. Among those pieces was a portrait of a youth from the Emperor Augustus family (inv. A 229). Nowadays it is still unknown who the pictured person is. Since the mid-19th century scholars have proposed quite a lot of attributions. This way or that, they have connected the image with a member of the Augustus family, mainly dating the monument to the late 1st BCE — early 1st CE. This point of view seems to be convincing. Scholars have pointed out that it could be either Marcus Claudius Marcellus (B. Köhne, 1847; S. A. Gedeonov,1866), or young Octavian (O. F. Waldhauer, 1923), or young Tiberius (L. Curtius, 1935), or young Claudius (J.-Ch. Balty, 1963), or Drusus the Elder (L. Fabbrini, 1964), or one of Augustus grandsons — Gaius or Lucius (A. I. Vostchinina, 1974; Zs. Kiss, 1975; O. Ia. Neverov, 1981). From his part, the author of this work supposes the name of Nero, a son of Germanicus — the version, which will be probably not final. According to this point of view the portrait can be dated to the late 10s–20s CE. Concurrently it is shown what forms a viewer’s vision and judgment in the process of interpreting one and the same piece of art. Besides, the author highlights criteria in attributing the sculpture as an image of a member, belonging to the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. In many aspects this method is based on the approach of a well-known Russian scholar — O. F. Waldhauer, a famous A. Furtwängler’s pupil.
Keywords
Reference Zashliapin, Boris D. Portrait of a Youth from the Hermitage Collection. To the Problem of Understanding Roman Sculptural Portraiture from the Early Imperial Period. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 7. Ed. S. V. Mal’tseva, E. Iu. Staniukovich-Denisova, A. V. Zakharova. — St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Univ. Press, 2017, pp. 128–137. ISSN 2312-2129. http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa177-1-14
Publication Article language russian
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