Floor Mosaic with Gladiators and Hunters

Roman art

In 1834, seven mosaic fragments were found during the excavation of the Borghese estate at Torrenova, along Via Casilina, for the prince Francesco Borghese Aldobrandini. The panels, five of which are large in size and two of which are smaller, depict hunting scenes (venationes) and gladiator combat (munera) and would have decorated the floor of a cryptoporticus in an ancient Roman suburban villa.

The present panel, in polychrome tesserae on a white background, depicts a panther hunt on two registers. In the upper register, the animals are struck through with spears and lying lifeless on the ground; in the lower register, they fight against the hunters. There is a panther on the far right that is not involved in the fighting, while on the far left, we can see the four feet of another animal, the rest of which is lost. The display of depictions of gladiator games and hunting inside private homes was part of a widespread tradition, between the third and fourth centuries CE, of commissioning art attesting to and celebrating the virtues of the master of the house.

Object details

Commentary

This mosaic, set in front of the door between the Salone and Room 4, depicts a struggle between two hunters (bestiarii) and a number of panthers. There is a description of the panther and its introduction into Rome for the Circus games in Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia 8.62–65). Here, the scenes are illustrated on two distinct planes: in the background, four big cats lie lifeless, struck through with spears; below, two hunters wound two attacking animals with their spears. There are two other panthers to the sides, although all that remains of the one on the left are the paws.

Strips of brown define the ground where the action takes place and shading has been used to give the figures depth. The hunters, described with polychrome tesserae against a solid white background, wear lavish white/grey clothing decorated with geometric embellishments called orbiculi. The garment of the figure on the left, who is labelled with the name Melitio, is decorated along the shoulder, while that of the figure on the right is embellished along the hem, in both cases white on a black background. The animals are for the most part rendered in green and grey, with black spots. The panel seems to be composed of a series of mosaic sheets joined by a long horizontal line. There are some losses, probably caused when the mosaic was detached from its original location, that have been filled with white tesserae. The arrangement of the figures is not entirely coherent, suggesting that they were rearranged during earlier restoration work.

This mosaic was discovered in 1834 along with the other four of similar size and two smaller ones on the Borghese estate in a hamlet in Torrenova, in an area called Vermicino-Quarto della Giostra, along Via Casilina. Luigi Canina, who was present when the mosaics were discovered, believed that they were actually already known in the seventeenth century, and that the place name Quarto della Giostra derived from the term used at the time for combat against animals. A large suburban villa was discovered during the excavations, which were carried out for the prince D. Francesco Borghese Aldobrandini. According to Canina, the mosaics decorated a cryptoporticus located on one side of the villa’s innermost peristyle, measuring about 140 palmi long and 12 wide. He further reported that ‘two thirds of this mosaic were found in good condition, and the remaining part was missing. It was divided into five panels framed by a meander motif, also mosaic in two simple hues’ (Canina 1834, pp. 193–194). The only part of the floor that has been preserved is the portion with figures, measuring in total 27.9 metres, while the meander frames are lost. The imagery is arranged in a single narrative frieze, depicting various moments of a single episode, scenes of gladiator combat (munera) and hunting (venationes), against a solid white background. Some of the figures are labelled with their name. After their discovery, the mosaics, divided into rectangular panels, were sent to Rome and kept, until 1839, in the Casino dell’Orologio, where they were restored by Gaetano Ruspi and Filippo Scaccia (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, busta 347, fascicolo 6). After their restoration, they were in the Salone, where Giuseppe Santalmassi made drawings of them.

In 1961, Luigi Rocchetti published a wide-ranging study of the mosaics, focused in particular on the stylistic rendering of the figures. The scholar notes that the rendering of the orbiculi decorating the clothing accurately reflects their use at the end of the third century CE. He also observes that the geometric embellishment on the shoulder of the hunter named Melitio is similar to that found on the clothing of three figures hunting rhinoceros in a mosaic at Piazza Armerina from the fourth century CE (Gentili 1959, pl. XXVII). The hunter’s hair, which is arranged neatly over his forehead, leaving his temples free, and long sideburns that merge with his beard suggest a date of the second half of the third century CE. More precisely, during the reign of Diocletian, as confirmed by a gold coin depicting that emperor and another portraying Galerius, both in the Museo Nazionale Romano (PanviniRosati 1961).

Turning to the epigraphy, the scholar notes that the handling of the ‘L’ of Melitio, with the lower stroke slanting downward, seems to have been especially common during the third and fourth centuries (Hübner 1885, p. LXI). Lastly, Rocchetti points out a difference between the rendering of the gladiators, who were portrayed with identifying details and in dynamic poses, and that of the hunters, who are more stylised and lack portrait-like individuality. The rendering of the panthers also seems to have been inspired by repetitive, stereotypical iconography, producing a monotone, still composition in contrast to the gladiator scenes in the other panels.

It was customary in the late-Antonine period to decorate homes with scenes of gladiator combat, which served to celebrate the virtues and prestige of the patron. Mosaics could present single subjects in individual panels within complicated decorative compositions or comprise a single narrative frieze in a more complex programme. Two emblemata mosaics from the Via Appia and now in the archaeological museum in Madrid belong to the first category. All that survives of one of them, found in the area of the church of Quo Vadis in 1720 and probably from a floor of a funerary building, are two polychrome mosaic images of quadrigas. The images of gladiators are known only through two paintings at Eton. The second, discovered in 1670 in the Orto del Carciofolo, outside Porta Capena, and also comprising just two polychrome figured emblemata, must have decorated the walls of the baths in a vast building.

An example of a continuous narrative with hunting scenes is found in a polychrome floor mosaic from a room in a domus on the Aventine Hill, dating to the fourth century CE (Blake 1940, p. 118, pl. 30).

The lack of information, beyond Luigi Canina’s article, about the context in which the Borghese mosaic was found allows us to date the work exclusively on the basis of stylistic analysis, which suggests dating between the third and fourth centuries CE.

Giulia Ciccarello