Furietti Centaurs: Difference between revisions

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[[Image:Old Centaur Musei Capitolini MC658.jpg|thumb|200px|left|The Old Centaur ([[Capitoline Museums]])]][[Image:Old Centaur Musei Capitolini MC658 n2.jpg|thumb|left|Signature (Old Centaur, Capitoline)]]

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[[Image:Young Centaur Musei Capitolini MC656.jpg|thumb|200px|right|The Young Centaur (Capitoline)]]

[[Image:Young| image1 = Old Centaur Musei Capitolini MC656 n2MC658.jpg|thumb|right|Signature (Young Centaur, Capitoline)]]

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[[Image:Old Centaur Eros Louvre Ma 562.jpg|thumb|right|The Old Centaur (Louvre)]]

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The '''Furietti Centaurs''' (known as the ''Old Centaur'' and ''Young Centaur'', or ''Older Centaur'' and ''Younger Centaur'', when being treated separately) are a pair of [[Hellenistic art|Hellenistic]] grey-black marble sculptures of [[centaur]]s. One is an old, bearded centaur, with a pained expression, and the other is a young smiling centaur with his arm raised.

| caption1 = The Old Centaur<br>(Capitoline Museum)

| image2 = Young Centaur Musei Capitolini MC656.jpg

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| caption2 = The Young Centaur

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The '''Furietti Centaurs''' (known as the '''Old Centaur''' and '''Young Centaur''', or '''Older Centaur''' and '''Younger Centaur''', when being treated separately) are a pair of [[Hellenistic art|Hellenistic]]or Roman statues in grey-black marble sculpturesfrom Laconia (Greece) [[sculpture]]s of [[centaur]]s. based on [[Hellenistic art|Hellenistic models]]. One is ana oldmature, bearded centaur, with a pained expression, and the other is a young smiling centaur with his arm raised. The [[putto|amorini]] are missing that once rode the backs of these centaurs, which are the outstanding examples of a group of sculptures varying the motif.<ref>M. Bieber, ''The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age'', rev. ed. (New York, 1961) figs. 581 and 583. The amorino survives on the Louvre centaur.</ref>

The strongly contrasted moods were intended to remind the Roman viewer of the soul troubled in pain with love or uplifted in joy, themes of [[Plato]]'s ''[[Phaedrus (dialogue)|Phaedrus]]'' and Hellenistic poetry.<ref>Van de Grift, "Tears and Revel: The Allegory of the [[Berthouville Treasure|Berthouville Centaur Scyphi]]" ''American Journal of Archaeology'' '''88''' (July 1984:377-88) esp. pp. 383, where he gives several literary instances in the context of the Furietti centaurs, notably [[Posidippus (epigrammatic poet)|Posidippus]], who complains in a poem of the [[Palatine Anthology]] of the power of love that drives him alternately "to tears and revel", and Roman references to the paradoxical nature of watered and unwatered wine, which espouse [[Temperance (virtue)|temperance]] and [[moderation]].</ref>

== Capitoline Centaurs ==

The sculptures were found together at [[Hadrian's Villa]] in [[Tivoli]] by [[Giuseppe Alessandro Cardinal Furietti|Monsignor Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti]] in December 1736; they were the outstanding pieces of his collection of antiquities, which he refused to give to [[Pope Benedict XIV]] at the cost of a cardinal's hat. Furietti was eventually created cardinal priest, by [[Clement XIII]] in the consistory of 24 September 1759. After his death, his heirs sold the centaurs and the famous Furietti mosaic of four drinking doves for 14,000 ''scuidi'', and they have been in the Capitoline collection ever since.

== Capitoline Centaurs ==

Both statues bear the signature of [[Aristeas (sculptor)|Aristeas]] and [[Papias (sculptor)|Papias]] of [[Aphrodisias]], a city in Asia Minor - either the sculptures were produced there, or the artists had come to Rome. They were copied in the 1st–2nd centuries AD by these sculptors from [[2nd century BC]] Hellenistic originals.

The sculptures were found together at [[Hadrian's Villa]] in [[Tivoli, Italy|Tivoli]] by Monsignor [[Giuseppe Alessandro Cardinal Furietti|Monsignor Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti]] in December 1736; they were the outstanding pieces of his collection of antiquities, which he refused to give to [[Pope Benedict XIV]]— at the cost of a [[Cardinal (Catholicism)|cardinal]]'s hat. Furietti was eventually created cardinal priest, by [[Pope Clement XIII]] in the consistory of 24 September 1759. After histhe cardinal's death, his heirs sold the centaurs and the famous [[Furietti mosaic]] of four drinking doves for 14,000 ''scuidiscudi'', and they have been in the [[Capitoline collectionMuseum]] ever since.<ref>Musei Capitolini, acc. nos. 656 and 658; Helbig, 4th ed., no. 1398 (entry by H. von Steuben).</ref>

Both statues bear the signatures of Aristeas and Papias of [[Aphrodisias]],<ref>{{Citation |last=Squire |first=Michael |title=Roman Art and the Artist |date=2015-09-11 |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118886205.ch9 |work=A Companion to Roman Art |pages=172–194 |editor-last=Borg |editor-first=Barbara E. |access-date=2023-07-25 |place=Chichester, UK |publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |language=en |doi=10.1002/9781118886205.ch9 |isbn=978-1-118-88620-5|url-access=subscription }}</ref> a city in Asia Minor— we cannot be certain about the exact relationship of the signatures to the sculptures, whether as originators of the model or sculptors of these versions. Where the sculptures were produced is not sure either: whether in Aphrodisias, or whether the artists, of whom nothing else is known, had come from there to Rome. To judge by the stylistic date these [[Hadrian]]ic copies will date to the late 1st or early 2nd century AD. They are generally assumed to be copies of 2nd century BC bronze<ref>Bronze originals would not have required the tree-stump supports beneath the bellies.</ref> Hellenistic originals, though recent critical study, notably by [[Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway]], suggests that many sculptural types usually thought to be Hellenistic are in fact Roman pastiches or inventions.

==Louvre==

[[Image:YoungOld Centaur MuseiEros CapitoliniLouvre MC656Ma 562.jpg|thumb|200px|right|The YoungOld Centaur (CapitolineLouvre)]]

Another copy of the same type as the Old Centaur, this time in white [[marble]], was excavated in Rome in the 17th century (having lost its probable Young Centaur pair). It entered the [[Borghese collection]], but was acquired from it[[Camillo Filippo Ludovico Borghese]] by [[Napoleon I of France|Napoleon]] in 1807 and is now in the [[Louvre Museum]].<ref>Louvre acc. no. 562.</ref> It has an [[Eros (mythology)|CupidEros]] on the centaur's back, teasing him, which has not survived on the Capitoline example, though the Eros's arm and foot and the centaur's left arm on this example are restorations, and the base and the support beneath the centaur are modern additions. The original right arm of the centaur is apulled moderntautly back showing that he has his hands bound tightly behind his back, and "grimaces in pain and sorrow as an amorino pulls the centaur's head back at an abrupt angle."<ref>Van de Grift addition1984:383.</ref>

==Reception==

The pair were popular in the 18th century, as illustrations of centaurs that posed them as civilized patrons of hospitality and learning, like [[Chiron]], rather than bestial half-animals (as at the [[Battle of the Centaurs]]). With their [[erotes]], they were emblems of the joy of young love and the contrasting bondage of maturity to love,<ref>Sexual desires "which torment the old and delight the young", as Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny observed in discussing this pair, in ''Taste and the Antique: the lure of classical sculpture, 1500-1900'', 1981, cat. no. 20, p. 178; they discuss the reception of the Furietti centaurs p. 179.</ref> themes to which a [[Rococo]] audience would easily respond. The observant [[Ennio Quirino Visconti]]<ref>Visconti, ''Monumenti scelti borghesiani'', 1837:29, noted by Haskell and Penny 1981.</ref> remarked on the Bacchic attributes of the Borghese/Louvre centaur, whose amorino is crowned with berried vine, to suggest that the forces in play were those of [[Substance intoxication|intoxication]] rather than love. Jon van de Grift, in examining the iconography of a pair of early Imperial Roman silver [[Skyphos|scyphi]] (drinking cups) embossed with motifs of centaurs ridden by erotes, part of the [[Berthouville treasure]],<ref>Van de Grift 1984:38.</ref> notes that "the motif of an amorino torturing an old sullen centaur, usually within a lively [[Thiasus|Dionysiac procession]], is encountered in Roman mosaics and Dionysiac sarcophagi;"<ref>Van de Grift 1984:382.</ref> he offers the Furietti centaurs as iconographic parallels.

The pair was popular in the 18th century, as illustrators of centaurs as civilized patrons of hospitality rather than bestial half-animals, and casts of them were collected across Europe - for example, the pair at the [[Royal Academy, London|Royal Academy]], one at either side of the foot of their main staircase, which are there to this day (in what is now the [[Courtauld Institute]] gallery; or those bought by [[Joseph Nollekens]] from [[Bartolomeo Cavaceppi]] that may still be seen at [[Shugborough Hall]], Staffordshire. Full-sized marble copies were also produced in large numbers - Cavaceppi produced them, and [[Pietro Della Valle]] sculpted one in Rome for the count [[Grimod d’Orsay]] - he intended it to be placed on a fountain in the Museum Courtyard in 1795, but it was in fact placed at Saint-Cloud in July 1802 (it was later brought to [[Palace of Versailles|Versailles]] on 23 March 1872, and on 24 September 1924 moved into the Grand Trianon garden there[http://www.chateauversailles.fr/en/1_Adopt_a_statue_in_the_Park.php]).

The pair was popular in the 18th century, as illustrators of centaurs as civilized patrons of hospitality rather than bestial half-animals, and castsCasts of them were collected across Europe - for example, the pair at the [[Royal Academy, London|Royal Academy]], one at either side of the foot of theirthe main staircase, which are there to this day (in what is now the [[Courtauld Institute]] gallery; or those bought by [[Joseph Nollekens]] from [[Bartolomeo Cavaceppi]] that may still be seen at [[Shugborough Hall]], Staffordshire. Full-sized marble copies were also produced in large numbers - Cavaceppi produced them, and [[Pietro Della Valle]] sculpted one in Rome for the count [[Pierre Gaspard Marie Grimod d'Orsay|Grimod d’Orsayd'Orsay]] - he intended it to be placed on a fountain in the Museum Courtyard<!--Louvre?--> in 1795, but it was in fact placed at Saint-Cloud in July 1802 (it was later brought to [[Palace of Versailles|Versailles]] on 23 March 1872, and on 24 September 1924 moved into the Grand Trianon garden there[.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.chateauversailles.fr/en/1_Adopt_a_statue_in_the_Park.php]) |title=Château de Versailles webpage |access-date=2007-06-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928030426/http://www.chateauversailles.fr/en/1_Adopt_a_statue_in_the_Park.php |archive-date=2007-09-28 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==Notes==

{{reflist|2}}

==External links==

*{{Commonscat-inline|YoungCentaurs andfrom OldVilla CentaursAdriana}}

*[http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=910 Louvre catalogue entry]

{{Louvre Museum}}

[[Category:HellenisticSculptures andin Romanthe sculptureCapitoline Museums]]

[[Category:Capitoline Museums collectionCentaurs]]

[[Category:AntiquitiesAncient ofGreek and Roman sculptures in the Louvre]]

[[Category:Borghese antiquities]]

[[Category:Antiquities acquired by Napoleon]]

[[Category:Hellenistic-style Roman sculptures]]

[[Category:Archaeological discoveries in Italy]]