Pseudo-Seneca
{{Short description|Roman bronze bust}}
File:Pseudo-Seneca MAN Napoli Inv5616 n01.jpg
The Pseudo-Seneca is a Roman bronze bust of the late 1st century BC that was discovered in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum in 1754, the finest example of about two dozen examples depicting the same face. It was originally believed to depict Seneca the Younger, the notable Roman philosopher, because its emaciated features were supposed to reflect his Stoic philosophy. However, modern scholars agree it is likely a fictitious portrait, probably intended for either Hesiod or Aristophanes. It is thought that the original example was a lost Greek bronze of {{Circa|200 BC}}. The bust is conserved in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
"Pseudo-Seneca" is also used for the uncertain authors of various antique and medieval texts such as De remediis fortuitorum, which purport to be by the Roman author.[http://www.bml.firenze.sbn.it/Seneca/eng/pseudo_seneca_contenuto.html "A large corpus of apocrypha - viz. falsifications, false attributions and extracts - compiled during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages has been connected to Seneca..."] At least some of these seem to preserve and adapt genuine Senecan content, for example Saint Martin of Braga's (d. c. 580) Formula vitae honestae, or De differentiis quatuor virtutumvitae honestae ("Rules for an Honest Life", or "On the Four Cardinal Virtues"). Early Mss. preserve Martin's preface, where he makes it clear that this was his adaptation, but in later copies this was omitted, and the work became thought fully Seneca's work.[https://books.google.com/books?id=VgPRu0CJ_sQC&pg=PA55 The Cardinal Virtues in the Middle Ages: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century, pp. 55-57, Brill, 2011]
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History
The type of this bust was first given its identification as a "genuine" contemporary portrait of Seneca by Theodor Galle, called Gallaeus, in an Antwerp republication of Fulvio Orsini's Imagines et Elogia Virorum Illustrium et Eruditor ex Antiquis Lapidibus et Nomismatib[us]...Printed in Rome, 1570. Gallaeus' title was Illustrium Imagines ex Antiquis Marmoribus Nomismatib[us] et Gemmis Expressae... (Antwerp 1598). Noted by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (1981), p 52 and note 67. at a time when the exemplary image of the great man was more inspiring than the quality and character of the work of art that embodied it. By the 17th century, about a dozen examples of the intense and haggard "Pseudo-Seneca" had been discovered, and as many more have been discovered since.Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (1981), p 52.
Image:Seneca.JPG, now generally identified as an imaginative portrait of either Hesiod or Aristophanes (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples)]]
Following the example of Cicero, who had decorated his study with busts, or of the imagines illustrium that peopled the villa at Sorrento of Pollius Felix, described by Statius,Silvae 2.2, discussed by Claudia J. Hough, "The Surrentine Villa of Pollius Felix" ([https://web.archive.org/web/20070221133415/http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Grad_Sch/McNair/2004/Hough.pdf on-line text]). gentlemen and scholars of the 16th and 17th centuriesFulvio Orsini's Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium (Rome, 1569), Paolo Giovio's "Giovio Series", Jean-Jacques Boissard's Icones Virorum Illustrium (1597) and Antonio Francesco Gori's Imagines virorum illustrium et deorum (1731-32) are familiar exemplars of the perennial cultural theme. were avid to have examples of the great writers of Classical Antiquity constantly before their eyes: "the learned all over Europe looked with awe and devotion at the Stoic philosopher, emaciated, even uncouth, disdainful of the luxury and corruption of Nero's court, and soon to commit suicide".Haskell and Penny 1981:52. An early 17th-century version of the head now among the Arundel marbles at the Ashmolean Museum was probably owned by the court painter Peter Paul Rubens.M. Vickers, "Rubens' 'Seneca'?" The Burlington Magazoine119 (1977).
Of the Herculanean version of the Pseudo-Seneca, as it is still widely known, the outstanding quality was quickly recognized by Winckelmann, though he already began to doubt that the bust was that of Seneca as early as 1764.Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 1764 in Winckelmann's Werke, Bk. 10, chap 3, 201f, §4. An engraving of it was published in the magnificently-produced series of folios that appeared under the royal patronage of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, Le Antichità di Ercolano (vol. V, 1767).
In 1813 a Roman image of Seneca was found on an inscribed marble herm portrait, which showed a man with quite different features.Now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Since then, the bust has been conjectured to represent many other people, including Aesop, Archilochus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Carneades, Epicharmus, Eratosthenes, Euripides, Hesiod, Hipponax, Lucretius, Philemon, and Philitas of Cos.{{cite journal |title= Ribera and the blind men |author= Delphine Fitz Darby |journal= The Art Bulletin |volume=39 |issue=3 |year=1957 |pages=195–217 |doi= 10.2307/3047713 |jstor= 3047713 |publisher= College Art Association}} Gisela Richter suggested that Hesiod seemed to be the most acceptable,{{cite book |author= Gisela Richter |author-link= Gisela Richter |title= The Portraits of the Greeks |url= https://archive.org/details/portraitsofgreek0000rich_y8h7 |url-access= registration |pages=I, 58ff |year=1965 |publisher=Phaidon |location=London}} a suggestion that other commentators have endorsed.Commentators agreeing with Richter:
- Prinz, Wolfram 1973. "The Four Philosophers by Rubens and the Pseudo-Seneca in Seventeenth-Century Painting" The Art Bulletin 55.3 (September 1973), pp. 410-428. "...one feels that it may just as well have been the Greek writer Hesiod..."
- Robertson, Martin Review of G, Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks The Burlington Magazine 108.756 (March 1966), pp 148-150. "...with Miss Richter, I accept the identification as Hesiod"
Image:Seneca-berlinantikensammlung-1.jpg discovered in 1813 (Antikensammlung Berlin)]]
Erika Simon believed that it represented Hesiod and that the lost original was created in the circle of Krates of Mallos and the frieze-sculptors of the Pergamon Altar.{{cite book |author= Erika Simon |title= Pergamon und Hesiod |location= Mainz am Rhein |publisher= Philipp von Zabern |year=1975}} The online presentation of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples[http://museoarcheologiconazionale.campaniabeniculturali.it/thematic-views/image-gallery/RA142 Museo Archeologico Nazionale: Portrait head of so-called Seneca] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120312100912/http://museoarcheologiconazionale.campaniabeniculturali.it/thematic-views/image-gallery/RA142 |date=2012-03-12 }} describes the state of discussion in the following way:
{{quote|Nowadays the prevailing interpretation is that the head is a portrait of a dramatist due to the presence, on a copy now at the Museo delle Terme at Rome, of an ivy wreath, the prize for theatrical contexts: some scholars specifically identify him as Aristophanes, because the type in question is associated, in a double herm of Villa Albani, with the portrait of Menander; according to other experts, it could be a portrait of Aesop, Hesiod, Callimachus or Apollonius of Rhodes. We can therefore be quite certain that the person depicted must have been extremely famous, as is proven by the large number of copies to survive, which number a total of forty. From the qualitative point of view, the head displays excellent workmanship; rather than a copy, it might well even be the original from which all the others are reproduced, and should be regarded as a portrait of reconstruction in which the accentuated wrinkles and folds of the face and forehead of the man, the intentionally unruly locks and the wrinkly neck contrast openly with the unwavering, penetrating gaze. The original should be ascribed to the trend of realistic virtuosity, dateable to between the third and second century BC.}}
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References
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External links
{{Commons category-inline|Pseudo-Seneca}}
{{Seneca|state=collapsed}}
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Category:1st-century BC Roman sculptures
Category:1754 archaeological discoveries
Category:Archaeological discoveries in Italy
Category:Hellenistic and Roman bronzes
Category:Sculptures in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples