Portrait of Cicero
This bust in porphyry and alabaster reproduces the physical traits of Marcus Tullius Cicero at a mature age. His wrinkled face and focused gaze duly reflect the personality of the orator as it is known to us through the accounts of contemporaries and ancient iconography. The careful characterisation of the face does not correspond to an equally attentive definition of the bust, which reveals uncertainties in the rendering of the folds of the toga.
This portrait of Cicero was first documented in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1832, when it was mentioned in the context of Room 4 of Villa Pinciana, where it has since been displayed together with other 15 busts of Roman emperors and consuls. All the works of the series were executed with the same materials and have roughly the same dimensions. Critics are in agreement in dating the works to the 17th century.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
porphyry and oriental alabaster
Dimensions
Provenance
Included in decoration of the Gallery of Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio between 1674 and 1676 (H. Hibbard, ‘Palazzo Borghese Studies. II, the Galleria’, The Burlington Magazine, 104 (1962), p. 11, no. 12); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, C, p. 49, no. 111. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1995/ 1996 C.B.C. Coop. a.r.l.
Commentary
The philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero is represented with his head turned to his left. His hair is combed toward his right, leaving his wrinkled forehead uncovered and his contracted eyebrows clearly visible. Signs of his age and expression are also evident on the sides of his eyes and in his cheeks. This portrait of Cicero at a mature stage of his life reflects the strong personality for which he is known and corresponds to other representations of him which have come down from Antiquity.
The alabaster bust shows the toga contabulata, which was worn with the front edge wrapped around the chest rather than let fall toward the ground. This motif served only to evoke the past and was philologically inaccurate, given that the garment was only in use among Romans in the later imperial era. A straight, shallow groove is visible on the right shoulder, which is not in any way connected to the movement of the garments.
The work is displayed in Room 4 of Galleria Borghese together with 15 busts in porphyry and alabaster from the family’s palazzo in Campo Marzio. Here they were once located in the gallery, framed by a plaster decoration made by Cosimo Fancelli between 1674 and 1676. According to documents from the Borghese Archive, the series was composed of the ‘Twelve Caesars’, with the addition of Nerva and Trajan as well as second versions of Vitellius and Titus (Vatican Secret Archive, AB, b. 5688, no. 15, published in Hibbard 1962, appendix, doc. I, pp. 19-20). In 1830 Nibby saw the series when it was still in Campo Marzio, describing the works as ‘16 busts with heads in porphyry, representing the 12 Caesars and 4 consuls’. Two years later, when they had been moved to Villa Pinciana and displayed along the wall of Room 4, he listed them as Trajan, Galba, Claudius, Otho, Vespasian (two exemplars) Scipio Africanus, Agrippa, Augustus, Vitellius (two exemplars), Titus, Nero, Cicero, Domitian, Vespasian, Caligula and Tiberius; this catalogue was confirmed by the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario.
Yet if this description (which includes a second Vespasian, executed by Tommaso Fedeli in 1619 and transferred from the Gladiator Room) corresponds to the current state of the series, we are left with several uncertainties: to begin with, we must ask what happened to the busts of Caesar, Titus and Nerva, which were present in 1674-76 but do not form part of the series today; secondly, we must wonder who the fourth consul referred to by Nibby in 1830 could be, given that currently only three are represented (Agrippa, Cicero and Scipio Africanus); and finally, we must inquire where the busts of the consuls came from. It is therefore possible that the sculptures displayed in the gallery, which were already present in Palazzo Borghese, did not correspond to those envisioned for the iconographic programme of the vault: this discrepancy may indeed account for the errors of identification in our sources. In that case, as Hibbard suggested, the bust of Cicero (or of Scipio Africanus) may have been used in place of that of Nerva (1962, p. 11 no. 12). The theory of possible substitutions is supported by the common date of execution of the busts, which critics believe were all sculpted in the same period during the 17th century (Faldi 1954, pp. 16-17; Della Pergola, 1974; Moreno, C. Stefani, 2000, p. 129; Del Bufalo 2018, p. 116).
Sonja Felici
Bibliography
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