V. Albert
2019 November, Italy, Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi
Hora - Carpo
Anonymous
Hora-Carpo, Carrara marble, first century A.D. with mid 16th century integrations ,height 1,51 m. Florence – Galleria degli Uffizi – inv. 1914, n. 136. For more than four centuries the statue of Hora has embellished the eastern corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, standing out, among the army of marbles that decorate the Vasarian complex, for the refinement of its modelling that portrays with surprising realism the impalpable robe worn by the young woman. These “thin garments” were what most struck Giorgio Vasari when, in 1568, he saw the statue displayed in one of the rooms of Palazzo Pitti, interpreting it as a portrayal of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruits. The grapes, pears, pomegranates and walnuts that almost spill from the folds of the cloak the woman holds in her lap, left no doubt about the character of this fascinating female personage, who must have been linked to the fertility of the earth and the generative force of nature. So this 16 century interpretation was not wholly inaccurate, though today, thanks to other examples of this kind of statue, we can more precisely identify the young woman as a Hora, one of the daughters of Zeus and Themis, goddess of justice, who watch over the natural cycles of the year.
Bringers of seasonal gifts, but also of fascination and talent for mortals, the Horae watched over the birth of men, exercising upon them a beneficial and healthy influence.
The Horae, three in number according to Hesiod (Hes.,
Theogonia, vv. 901 et seq.), were, by their life-giving nature, inevitably linked to the idea of Spring and the rebirth of nature after the rigours of winter, so much so that in the Homeric hymns
(Hom., Hymn to Ceres vv 54 and 192), it is they who bring back
Persephone to the Earth from the Underworld, thus marking
the start of the warm season. But their action was not limited to
spring fruits, it also extended to protecting and favouring crops
of other seasons, including the autumn, of which we see echoes
in the fruit chosen to nestle in the robe of the Florentine
statue.
The quality of the Uffizi marble, probably dating back to the
first century A.D., justified the intervention of an excellent 16th century sculpture to integrate the parts missing when it was discovered: the head, parts of the hands and the base. The taste
of the time did not accept the aesthetics of the fragment and it
was necessary always to restore formal unity to the damaged
ancient sculptures given back by the Earth. The draping,
which clings to the woman’s body in her rapid movement, highlights the shape of the body rather than hiding it, creating, in the lower part of the figure, a play of folds blown by the wind that
is almost a virtuoso execution with its irregular and contorted
movement. In this description of the robe, which is impalpable
and clings to the muscles like wet fabric, we cannot help recognising the echo of Attic models of the post-Phidias School,
which have in the Nike of Paionos in Olympia and in the reliefs
of the balustrade of the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis
in Athens their most accomplished examples. But other clues,
such as the mannered and colourful taste in portraying the
lower part of the robe, presuppose experience of an already
mature Hellenism, suggesting that a Hellenic archetype of the
third or second century BC was the prototype from which the
portrayals we know of the Horae were derived.
Among these copies, spread among the Vatican, Tarragona and Venice, the Florentine statue stands out for the sensitivity with which it portrays the lightness of the figure, which seems frozen in a dance step rather than in a normal walk. Aby Warburg, at the end of the 19th century, recognised in the sculpture the direct inspiration drawn by Sandro Botticelli for the figure of Flora portrayed in his famous Primavera. The position of the figure, the act of bringing the hands into the lap to hold the folds of the garment filled with flowers, but, above all the description of a light and ethereal robe seemed to betray a close link between this iconographic type and that portrayed in the 15th century work.
2019 November, Italy, Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi
Hora - Carpo
Anonymous
Hora-Carpo, Carrara marble, first century A.D. with mid 16th century integrations ,height 1,51 m. Florence – Galleria degli Uffizi – inv. 1914, n. 136. For more than four centuries the statue of Hora has embellished the eastern corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, standing out, among the army of marbles that decorate the Vasarian complex, for the refinement of its modelling that portrays with surprising realism the impalpable robe worn by the young woman. These “thin garments” were what most struck Giorgio Vasari when, in 1568, he saw the statue displayed in one of the rooms of Palazzo Pitti, interpreting it as a portrayal of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruits. The grapes, pears, pomegranates and walnuts that almost spill from the folds of the cloak the woman holds in her lap, left no doubt about the character of this fascinating female personage, who must have been linked to the fertility of the earth and the generative force of nature. So this 16 century interpretation was not wholly inaccurate, though today, thanks to other examples of this kind of statue, we can more precisely identify the young woman as a Hora, one of the daughters of Zeus and Themis, goddess of justice, who watch over the natural cycles of the year.
Bringers of seasonal gifts, but also of fascination and talent for mortals, the Horae watched over the birth of men, exercising upon them a beneficial and healthy influence.
The Horae, three in number according to Hesiod (Hes.,
Theogonia, vv. 901 et seq.), were, by their life-giving nature, inevitably linked to the idea of Spring and the rebirth of nature after the rigours of winter, so much so that in the Homeric hymns
(Hom., Hymn to Ceres vv 54 and 192), it is they who bring back
Persephone to the Earth from the Underworld, thus marking
the start of the warm season. But their action was not limited to
spring fruits, it also extended to protecting and favouring crops
of other seasons, including the autumn, of which we see echoes
in the fruit chosen to nestle in the robe of the Florentine
statue.
The quality of the Uffizi marble, probably dating back to the
first century A.D., justified the intervention of an excellent 16th century sculpture to integrate the parts missing when it was discovered: the head, parts of the hands and the base. The taste
of the time did not accept the aesthetics of the fragment and it
was necessary always to restore formal unity to the damaged
ancient sculptures given back by the Earth. The draping,
which clings to the woman’s body in her rapid movement, highlights the shape of the body rather than hiding it, creating, in the lower part of the figure, a play of folds blown by the wind that
is almost a virtuoso execution with its irregular and contorted
movement. In this description of the robe, which is impalpable
and clings to the muscles like wet fabric, we cannot help recognising the echo of Attic models of the post-Phidias School,
which have in the Nike of Paionos in Olympia and in the reliefs
of the balustrade of the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis
in Athens their most accomplished examples. But other clues,
such as the mannered and colourful taste in portraying the
lower part of the robe, presuppose experience of an already
mature Hellenism, suggesting that a Hellenic archetype of the
third or second century BC was the prototype from which the
portrayals we know of the Horae were derived.
Among these copies, spread among the Vatican, Tarragona and Venice, the Florentine statue stands out for the sensitivity with which it portrays the lightness of the figure, which seems frozen in a dance step rather than in a normal walk. Aby Warburg, at the end of the 19th century, recognised in the sculpture the direct inspiration drawn by Sandro Botticelli for the figure of Flora portrayed in his famous Primavera. The position of the figure, the act of bringing the hands into the lap to hold the folds of the garment filled with flowers, but, above all the description of a light and ethereal robe seemed to betray a close link between this iconographic type and that portrayed in the 15th century work.