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A rectangular marble relief portrays Hermes striding to the right in profile, holding the infant Dionysos in front of him.

A rectangular marble relief portrays Hermes striding to the right in profile with only his right arm in view holding the infant Dionysos in front of him. The infant is wrapped in an ample folded garment and Hermes wears a three-cornered hat and a flowing cape that trails behind him, pinned on the right shoulder. The marble slab shows wear and even brown-orange staining throughout, with chopped corners and some loss at the bottom right edge. A rectangular notch has been removed at the bottom center edge and there are two small drilled holes near the top edge.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1970.25
Title
Decorative Relief: Hermes and the Infant Dionysos
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
sculpture
Date
late 1st century BCE
Period
Hellenistic period, Late, to Early Roman Imperial
Culture
Graeco-Roman
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/287352

Location

Location
Level 3, Room 3400, Ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Art, Ancient Greece in Black and Orange
View this object's location on our interactive map

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Marble
Technique
Carved
Dimensions
68.8 cm h x 46.8 cm w x 7 cm d
(27 1/16 in. h x 18 7/16 in. w x 2 3/4 in. d)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Lanckoronski Collection, Vienna. Palazzo Albani-Del Drago, Rome (by 1878-1879). [Jeannette Brun, Skulpturen der Antike], Zurich, (by 1970), sold; to the Fogg Art Museum, 1970.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, David M. Robinson Fund
Accession Year
1970
Object Number
1970.25
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Description
Hermes strides to the right, holding the infant Dionysos. Hermes wears a petosos (his three-cornered hat) and flowing chlamys. Dionysos is wrapped in a folded garment.
Commentary
The subject of Dionysos's childhood was popular during the late Hellenistic-early Roman period. The classicizing and graceful figures seen here are characteristic of the Neo-Attic style. Neo-Attic sculptors utilized stock figures and themes to create harmonious compositions, rooted in earlier Greek sculpture of the fifth century BCE. Dionysiac themes were among the favorite subjects of these Hellenistic and Roman sculptors who prioritized style above subject.

Neo-Attic sculpture is largely decorative in nature. This relief likely stood in a Roman garden where it would have been surrounded by other decorative stone reliefs such as carved, marble kraters or fountains.

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
95

Rectangular Decorative Relief Depicting Hermes Carrying the Infant Dionysos

Greek, neo-Attic, last part of the first century B.C.

The corners of the slab have been chopped off, and there is ancient and later wear to the surfaces.

The subject is Hermes carrying the infant Dionysos to the nymphs of Nysa; a nymph was seated, receiving the child, in the now lost right side of the panel. Hermes strides to the right, holding the infant Dionysos in front of him. The former wears his petasos and a chlamys pinned on the right shoulder and flowing out behind him. The latter is wrapped in an ample himation. A fillet molding, 0.03m wide, serves as a groundline, and there are cutdown traces of a similar, thinner molding at the left.

The central group reproduced in this relief (including the personification of Nysa or the chief nymph) was combined with standard Neo-Attic Dionysiac figures on rectangular reliefs, circular bases, vases, and the supports for candelabra in Graeco-Roman times, from the age of Augustus through that of Hadrian (27 B.C. to A.D. 137). A circular puteal or wellhead in the Vatican Museums from a villa at Albano, as well as the famous marble krater signed by Salpion, in Naples, gives a rich repertory of figures surrounding the main group, including an old Silenus, dancing and flute-blowing satyrs, and a maenad beating on a tambourine (Lippold, 1956, pp. 240-244, pl. 112, 113).

A relief such as the Del Drago-Harvard example must have been set on a villa or garden wall between other such reliefs with the same stock neo-Attic figures also appearing together on the marble kraters and wellheads.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

  • Georg Zoega, Li bassirilievi antichi di Roma, Pietro Piranesi (Rome, Italy, 1808), pp. 20-22, pl. III
  • Karl Otfried Müller and Friedrich Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten kunst, Dietrich (Göttingen, 1856), p. 15, no. 395
  • Friedrich Matz and F. von Duhn, Antike Bildwerke in Rom, Breitkopf und Hartel (Leipzig, Germany, 1882), III, p. 134, no. 3733
  • Friedrich Hauser, Die neu-attischen Reliefs, Konrad Wittwer (Stuttgart, 1889), pp. 30-31, no. 35
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III, "Greek, Etruscan and Roman Sculptures in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston", American Journal of Archaeology (1964), 68, p. 333, note 89
  • Fogg Art Museum Acquisitions, 1969-1970, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1971), pp. 41-49, fig. 1
  • George M. A. Hanfmann and David Gordon Mitten, "The Art of Classical Antiquity", Apollo (May 1978), vol. 107, no. 195, pp. 362-369, pp. 366, 368, note 30.
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III, Roman Art: Early Republic to Late Empire, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Department of Classical Art (Boston, MA, 1978), p. 46
  • Caroline Houser, Dionysos and His Circle: Ancient Through Modern, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1979), p. 58-59, no. 39
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III, Greek and Roman Sculpture in America, University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1981), pp. 198-199, no. 164
  • Heide Froning, Marmor-Schmuckreliefs mit griechischen Mythen im I.Jh.v.Chr.: Untersuchungen zu Chronologie und Funktion., Verlag Philipp von Zabern (Mainz, Germany, 1981), pp. 48, 54, note 36, 140, note 1.
  • David Gordon Mitten and Amy Brauer, Dialogue with Antiquity, The Curatorial Achievement of George M. A. Hanfmann, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1982), p. 14, no. 43.
  • Maureen Russell Neil, "Technical Examination of Five Ancient Marbles" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, 1989), Unpublished, passim
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III and Amy Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 109, no. 95
  • Werner Oenbrink, "Die ehemalige Skulpturensammlung des Grafen Karol Lanckoroński (1848 - 1933) in Wien", Archeologia śródziemnomorska w Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskim, 1897-1997: materiały sympozjum naukowego, Kraków, 21-23 października 1997, ed. Joachim Śliwa, Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Kraków, 1998), 159–181, pp. 164, 173 Abb. 6, 175-176
  • Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Artemis (Zürich, Switzerland, 1999), Vo. 5, Hermes 378a.

Exhibition History

  • Dionysos and His Circle: Ancient through Modern, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 12/10/1979 - 02/10/1980
  • Dialogue with Antiquity: The Curatorial Achievement of George M.A. Hanfmann, Fogg Art Museum, 05/07/1982 - 06/26/1982
  • Hellenistic Art: Objects from an Expanded World, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 10/03/2006 - 07/29/2007
  • 32Q: 3400 Greek, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 02/17/2017 - 01/01/2050

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu