Colossal Female Head
Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (Rome c.1716 - Rome 1799)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
399 BC - 300 BC
Materials
Pentelic marble with crystals
Measurements
1100 x 800 mm; 840 mm (Height); 270 mm (Height)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486333
Summary
Pentelic marble with crystals, Colossal Female Head, Greek, possibly 4th century BC. The upper portion of a colossal marble draped female figure with the head turned slightly to the right. Made up from fragments of two separate colossal full-length statues into a single bust, probably in the eighteenth century by Cavaceppi. The face a later Greek replica of Artemis of Ariccia of 5th century type. It has been suggesed that the head is based on a Greek original copied for one of the temples erected in Rome during Augustan era. Recent research suggests that the original fragments may have belonged to two Athenian statues of the fourth century BC. If so, this heroic bust is one of the great treasures of the Petworth collection of Antique sculpture. Juno was an early Italian goddess originally associated with women and childbirth and also identified with Hera.
Provenance
Probably the 'Juno capital bust of' which the 3rd Earl of Egremont offered for sale for £70.00 in 1787 and possibly the 'Colossal Head' of 'Juno' bought in 1760 from the Palazzo Verospi, Rome and thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72), arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M. Treasury.
Marks and inscriptions
27 (painted on front of socle)
Makers and roles
Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (Rome c.1716 - Rome 1799), restorer