Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
83
Torso and Top of the Legs of a Small Statue of Sylvanus
Head, right arm above elbow, right leg from the middle of the thigh, left foot and ankle (at shoe of the boot), and lower part of the support at the left leg are missing.
This is a decorative work of the Roman Imperial period of the type perhaps to be found in a garden around Pompeii or Herculaneum. The figure was holding a large branch in his (damaged) left hand. Its top (partly missing) blossomed out into a bunch of leaves and, presumably, fruits. More fruits and flowers are visible in the ample cloak, which is pinned with a brooch on the right shoulder and hangs down the left side and back.
The figure seems too mature to be an Eros or a seasonal Genius. The drillwork in the fruits and cloak and in the pubic hair suggests a date in the third century A.D., around 250.
The prototypes for small, rustic statues of Sylvanus were based on figures of Zeus or even Poseidon or Saturn with appropriate alteration of attributes. In addition to his role as a patron of woodlands and parks or gardens, Sylvanus was much admired in the Antonine period of the Roman Empire as patron of the countryside of Italy and, eventually, under Commodus (A.D. 180-192) as a deity of the slaves (Poulsen, 1951, p. 251-252, nos. 492, 493, pl. XXXVII).
A pair of statues in Berlin demonstrate that Sylvanus can come in an unclothed version (wearing only the cloak of forest products) or clothed (a workman's tunic), depending on whether his divine or his rustic nature is stressed (Conze, 1891, p. 120, nos. 282, 283). The bodily prototypes for statues of Sylvanus varied in the Antonine period, the probable date of the Harvard figure. Hadrian had borrowed from various figures of the fifth and fourth centuries for its representations, statues and reliefs, of his favorite youth Antinous. Variations in the position of the cloak and mirror reversals in the stance are common. Compare the clean, cold torso based on Polykleitan models that was in the Ernst Brummer Collection (Galerie Koller A.G. 1979, pp. 250-251, no. 638) or the almost Severe Style torso with large cloak or goatskin of fruits suspended from the shoulders, in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (Vermeule, C., Cahn, Hadley, 1977, p. 23, no. 29). One of the finest complete statues of the type from which the small figure at Harvard comes was found between Merida and Santiponce (Italica) in Spain and is now in the Museo Arqueologico, Madrid. The noble, wreathed, bearded head bears enough resemblance to the Emperor Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-161) to suggest a date (Garcia y Bellido, 1949, pp. 107-108, no. 106, pl. 84).
A similar small statue, varying only in the mirror reversal of the hips, and in almost identical condition, shows by its drillwork or lack of same to have been carved in the Trajanic or Hadrianic periods (AD 100-135), if not earlier (Sotheby Sale, London, 13 December, 1982, p. 86, no. 263).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
