Juno Ludovisi
- Title:
- Juno Ludovisi
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Unknown
- Photographer:
- Alexandridis, Annetta
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
1st c. CE
2009 (image)
- Site:
- Italy (probable discovery site; known since mid-16th c.) (original)
- Location:
- Warehouse
Italy (probable discovery site; known since mid-16th c.) (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0258
- Accession Number:
- Sage no. 204
258 - File Name:
- CCC_0258.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 114 (H) cm (head and neck only)
- Culture:
- Roman
- Style/Period:
- Roman Imperial, Classicizing
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
marble sculpture in the round (original) - Subject:
- Juno (Roman deity)
Hera (Greek deity) - Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 104 x 62 (centimeters, height x width)
- Description:
- This is a reduced cast of the colossal acrolithic head known as the Juno Ludovisi, a head and neck sculpted from Greek marble that would have been set into a separately sculpted body. The heavily classicizing figure looks calmly ahead. Her oval face is soft, verging on fleshy. Her nose, partially restored in the original, is long and wide-bridged. She has small, closed lips. The figure's wavy hair is parted in the middle and pulled back loosely into a braided loop at the back of the neck. A curly lock falls on either side of her neck and is intertwined with the beaded band she wears below the lotus and palmette-decorated diadem that sits atop her head. The bust is shoulderless and draped. Although this was long identified as an image of Juno or Hera, scholarly opinion since the mid-20th c. holds that the head is a highly idealized portrait of Antonia Minor, the powerful and well-connected niece of the emperor Augustus and mother of the emperor Claudius (see Rumpf). Leading to this identification are features such as the loop of braids at the back of the head and the beaded band--associated with priestesses--at the base of the headpiece. This cast was produced from a half-sized reduction of the head and the draped bust was sculpted by Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel, a 19th c. German sculptor (see Sage Catalog, p. 40). From January until July 2015, this object was exhibited in the Bartels Gallery, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, as part of an exhibition titled "Cast and Present: Replicating Antiquity in the Museum and the Academy."
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
no. 8631 - Bibliography:
- Beatrice Palma and Lucilla de Lachenal, Museo Nazionale Romano, Le Sculture, I,5: I Marmi Ludovisi nel Museo Nazionale Romano (Rome: De Luca Editore, 1983), 133-137, no. 58, fig. 58
Antonio Giuliano, ed., La collezione Boncompagni-Ludovisi (Venice: Marsilio, 1992), 122-127, no. 10 (Alessandra Costantini)
Helga von Heintze, Juno Ludovisi, Opus Nobile 4 (Bremen: Walter Dorn Verlag, 1957)
Brian Charles Rose, Dynastic Commemoration and Imperial Portraiture in the Julio- Claudian Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Andreas Rumpf, Antonia Augusta, Abhandlungen der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, no. 5 (Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1941)
Renate Tölle-Kastenbein, "Juno Ludovisi: Hera oder Antonia Minor?" AM 89 (1974), 241-253, pls. 91-96
Rolf Winkes, Livia, Octavia, Julia (Louvain-la-Neuve and Providence: Art and Archaeology Publications, 1995)
Susan Wood, Imperial Women: a Study in Public Images, 40 B.C. - A.D. 68 (Leiden: Brill, 1999) - Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Museo delle Terme (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.