Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
The goddess Diana (Artemis) is shown as a huntress. She strides forward onto her right leg, which is missing below the knee. Her left leg, preserved only to the top of her boot, holds her weight and is slightly bent. Her left arm is bent over her chest, and her left hand is pierced to hold her bow, which was made separately and is missing. She reaches back with her right arm to draw an arrow from the quiver on her back. Her bare arms are tubular, with no modeling of the muscles. She wears a short chiton with a cloak held in a roll around her waist. The ends of the cloak are tucked up in pouch-like folds.
Her head is slightly raised, and her eyes are wide open as she prepares to take aim. Her hair is parted in the center, and two locks are twisted into a topknot in front, with rolls of hair fraiming her face and a bun at the back of her head. The statuette is modeled fully in the round. The coiffure, stance, and clothing relate this piece to the cult image of Diana Nemorensis (Diana of the Woods) from the sanctuary of the goddess at Nemi (Ariccia), which dates from the second phase of the sanctuary in the mid-first century BCE. The sanctuary seems to have been active until the mid-second century CE (1). Diana was the goddess of the hunt and protectress of the woods as well as women, especially in childbirth. Images of her are found in sanctuaries and domestic and commercial contexts. It is difficult to date these figures, which were mass-produced over a long period of time. The votive bronze images of Diana found at Nemi are dated from the third to first centuries BCE (2), but the Harvard piece also resembles the image of Diana on a terracotta relief created during the Antonine phase of the courtyard of the Caseggiato di Diana at Ostia that could date from the first to the early second centuries CE (3).
NOTES:
1. Compare the fragments of votive marble statuettes found at Nemi, which are identified with the cult image of the goddess, in P. Guldager Bilde and M. Moltesen, A Catalogue of Sculptures from the Sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia (Rome, 2002) 24-27, nos. 5-6 (torso) and 10-11 (heads), figs. 40-45. See P. Guldager Bilde, “The Sculptures from the Sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, Types and Contextualisation: An Overview,” in Nemi–Status Quo: Recent Research at Nemi and the Sanctuary of Diana, eds. J. R. Brandt, A. L. Touati, and J. Zahle (Rome, 2000) 93-109, for the history of the excavation and dating. See also E. H. Richardson, Etruscan Votive Bronzes: Geometric, Orientalizing, Archaic (Mainz, 1983) 361, for the spread of cult images of Diana Nemorensis and other Latin divinities. The prototype was established in the Hellenistic period; see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Artemis/Diana no. 24a. For recent research at Nemi with bibliography, see Brandt, Touati, and Zahle 2000 (supra).
2. See T. F. C. Blagg, Mysteries of Diana: The Antiquities from Nemi in Nottingham Museums, exh. cat., Castle Museum (Nottingham, 1983) 54-56, nos. N 614-19. For comparable bronze figurines, see LIMC Artemis/Diana nos. 67-75, dated from the Republican to Imperial periods. See also 1978.495.63.
3. See J. T. Bakker, Living and Working with the Gods: Studies of Evidence for Private Religion and its Material Environment in the City of Ostia, Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 12 (Amsterdam, 1994) 104, pls. 72-73.
Jane Ayer Scott
