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Marcus Claudius Marcellus as Hermes Logios Life Size Statue
STR-30.02
Last items in stock
€6,549.00
VAT included
The only son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Octavia, Augustus' sister, the youngest of the Marcellus family was better known for his relationship with Emperor Augustus and his early death than for his own achievements.
The young Marcellus was named after an ancestor who was a consul in 222 BC and was highly acclaimed for his military victories against the Gauls and the Carthaginians.
After young Marcellus fought bravely in Spain in 25 BC under the command of Augustus, the princes gave his nephew his daughter Julia in marriage and arranged for his rapid advancement in the cursus honorum. As Curule Aedile in 23, the year of his death, Marcellus organized lavish games that brought him great popularity.
His death in the Roman spa of Baiae, in Campania, before his 20th birthday, was mourned by his family and by the Roman people. His memory is preserved both in stone and in verse. It is believed that the equestrian statue of a young aristocrat who resembles the descendants of Augustus is Marcellus.
An oversized marble statue of Marcellus, sculpted by Cleomenes the Athenian in the heroic Greek style, was commissioned by Augustus in 20 BC.
Augustus had his grandson buried in the family mausoleum, where the names of his parents were kept. Augustus built and posthumously dedicated an elegant theater, while his sister Octavia named a library after their son.
The verse Suetonius relates in his Vita Vergili was so moving that Octavia fainted when she and her brother heard the famous epic poet Vergil read aloud the section commemorating him in Aeneid VI. 868-886.
Dimensions
Height: 78.7 ".
Width: 27.5 ".
Depth: 19.7 ".
Weight: 90 kg (198.4 lbs)
Material: reconstituted marble (marble dust + high density resin).
Delivery time: Delivery within 15 days to 25 days.
Shipping: Transport costs are automatically calculated when you finalize your purchases at the checkout.
Marcellus in Hermes Logios, is a sculpture of Marcellus the Younger, represented in Hermes Chthonios, conductor of the dead. The original sculpture was made of white marble, around 20 BC. That is two years after the death of Marcellus, certainly by his uncle Augustus, to be a funerary monument. It was signed by Cleomenes of Athens.
Description
It is a large, life-sized statue of naked Marcus Claudius Marcellus wearing a tunic draped nonchalantly on his left arm. The end of the sheet touches the ground and gently comes to rest on part of the shell of a turtle.
As for the right arm, it is raised so that the hand is at the level of the right temple, probably holding a vegetal crown that has now disappeared.
The young man leans on his left foot, in a contrapposto position inherited from the classical Attic statuary of severe style, to which the statue is attached by its cold frontality, while mixing with this idealizing tradition a certainly a high realism with the portrait of the subject.
His head is slightly lowered and turned slightly to the right. This position of the head and the expression of sadness that emerges from it confirm the funerary character of this statue, which is supposed to inspire melancholy for this young man whom fortune would have led to empire if he had not died prematurely in 23 BC.
The turtle on which the falling drapery rests is also the emblem of Aphrodite. Its presence refers to Aeneas (one of the heroes of the Trojan War), son of Anchise and Aphrodite, of whom Augustus and his nephew claimed to be descendants, and to whom Marcellus was compared in Virgil's Aeneid.
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