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57 - BASED ON AN ANTIQUE PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY FROM THE REIGN …
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Estimate €15,000 - €18,000
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Description
BASED ON AN ANTIQUE PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY FROM THE REIGN OF HADRIAN Presumed to be VIBIA MATIDIA Sister of Vibia Sabina, wife of Hadrian. (85 – 162/165 AD) White marble with deposits and antique patina H. 37.5 cm Italy, late 18th – early 19th century, after a Roman original from the early 2nd century AD. This female head masterfully recreates one of the most admired Roman portraits: the Fonseca bust in the Musei Capitolini (fig. 1). It features the idealised face with its brilliant polish, individualised features (deep-set eyes, pronounced brow ridges, smooth eyeballs) and, above all, the extraordinary hairstyle gathered high on the head — a high frontal tuft cascading in ‘corkscrew’ curls with ringed ends, a crown divided into ribbed bands, and a large bun of overlapping plaits at the back, from which fine strands escape at the nape of the neck. The prototype, donated to the Musei Capitolini by the Portuguese clergyman Giuseppe Maria Fonseca (died 1752) and housed in the Palazzo Nuovo (Sala degli Imperatori), dates from the late Trajanic / early Hadrianic period (117–138 AD). This spectacular hairstyle, characteristic of female portraits from the Hadrianic period, is documented right down to the method of its creation by two funerary stuccoes from the La Marsa necropolis, near Carthage, where a hairdresser is styling a matron’s hair. The Fonseca bust has traditionally been identified — on the basis of the related portrait in the Archaeological Museum of Fiesole (fig. 4) — as an effigy of Vibia Matidia, known as ‘Matidia Minor’ (an identification that is now disputed). Other heads of the same type, though of inferior quality, complete the ancient series: a portrait from the late Flavian period in Venice (Grimani donation, fig. 2) and a head from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (fig. 3), whose previously proposed identification as Marciana is no longer accepted. Our head follows the tradition of copies after antiquity produced in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the famous Capitoline marbles were reproduced for Grand Tour collectors and neoclassical cabinets. The fidelity to the Fonseca model—the composition of the forelock, the ribbed skullcap, the plaited bun—indicates a copyist working directly from this illustrious prototype, with a virtuosity in chiselling and a taste for chiaroscuro inherited from the original. Vibia Matidia (known as Matidia Minor, ‘Matidia the Younger’, c. 85 – c. 161 AD) belonged to the imperial family of the Antonines. The daughter of Salonia Matidia — herself the daughter of Marciana, Trajan’s sister — she was therefore Trajan’s grandniece and the half-sister of Vibia Sabina, the wife of Emperor Hadrian, who was thus her brother-in-law. She never received the title of Augusta, never married and had no children; nevertheless, she was a wealthy, cultured and influential woman, the owner of an estate in Umbria which gave its name to the present-day town of Matigge (Insula Matidiae). Having reached a ripe old age, she was close, in her final years, to her grand-nephew, the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and his family.
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About the sale FROM CAESAR TO CAESAR
Auction location
Auction time 07/08/2026 at 3:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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