Title
Lower half of a draped statuette
Content
I.D. no : 21165
Dimensions: Max. H. 28 cm; Max. W. 12 cm.
Material: Coarse-grain white marble
Provenance: Temi Zammit’s 1924-25 excavations north of the Roman Domus, Rabat.[1]
Current location: Domus Romana Museum, Rabat.
Condition: Only the lower half of the statuette survives, from the waist down. Apart from frequent, but shallow, chippings affecting practically all the crests of the drapery folds, the lowest folds, close to the feet, are more deeply damaged. The right foot has been completely obliterated while the forepart of the left foot, which projected beyond the base of the statuette is also missing.
Description: The statuette has a flattened back with only a straight, pillar-like pleat of drapery carved and smoothed uniformly from top to bottom. This suggests that the statuette was intended to stand against a wall and to be seen only from the front.
The figure stands on its right leg and releases its weight from the left one to bend the knee to step forward. The figure wears a heavy-looking chiton reaching down to the feet, of which only the left one is only partly visible. Its folds are carved quite deeply and naturalistically with some use of the running drill. Over the chiton what looks like a peplos with two overfolds is worn, rather than the usual himation. It falls naturally with thick vertical folds that hide the figure’s body on its right side while highlighting the flexed left leg. The edge of each overfold is decorated by a narrow hem.
Discussion: Relatively few ancient draped statues derived from Hellenistic prototypes appear to wear a combination of a chiton and a himation with a low overfold, or wrapped in two layers in front, over the lighter chiton.[2] In most of these exceptions the hems of the himation are joined in thick folds on the figure’s left side.[3] It is much more likely, therefore, that this statuette wore a Doric peplos over the Ionic chiton in the same way as our Archaistic statue (I.D. no 21095) does. As in that statue the peplos is open on the right side of the figure and has a long overfold.
In Hellenistic statuary the peplos on its own is normally worn by Athena,[4] though some similarly clad figures have been identified with Artemis.[5] The combination of the peplos and chiton is really not rare in Greek statuary, but is normally found in the Classical period of the 5th-4th centuries.[6] Some statues wearing this combination have been identified as Demeter.[7] The same attire characterises a fully preserved, but headless, statue of roughly similar dimensions, “said to be from Athens” and housed in the Louvre. It is dated to the second half of the 4th century BC.[8]
The Rabat fragment, therefore, probably belonged to a cult or votive statuette of one of the named divinities, most likely within a household context, a Roman copy of the first century AD, related to a 4th-century BC prototype. It further testifies to the classicising tastes of a section of the inhabitants of Roman Melite.
Bibliography: (previous publications of item):
Zammit 1926: 4; Zammit 1930: 24 and fig.: “small marble figurine representing a lady of rank with an elaborate dress, dainty work of the Hellenistic period of art”.
[1] Zammit 1926: 4.
[2] Horn 1931: pls 4,2-3, 7, 8,1-2, 11,1, 14,1-2, 21,1-3.
[3] Alföldi-Rosenbaum 1960: 90-91, nos 148-53, pl. 71; Calza 1964: 98, fig. 159, pl. 94.
[4] See Horn 1931: pls 2,1-3, 28,1, 32, 1-2, 34,1-3.
[5] Paribeni 1959: 68-71, nos 154, 156, 161, pls 90-92.
[6] Bieber 1934: 34, 50-51, pls 23, 28, 31,3.
[7] Paribeni 1959: 43, nos 65-66, pl. 58.
[8] Clairmont 1993 (Introductory vol.): 33, fig. 12.