SENECANA -- "Seneca di marmo nero"

Speranza

The "Seneca" statue is recorded in Francucci's poem on the Borghese collection in 1613 and by 1625 it was certainly in the VILLA BORGHESE.

It is probable that this is the "SENECA DI MARMO NERO" which VACCA, writing in 1594 or before, remembered as having been found with other fragments on an estate between S. MATTEO and S. GIULIANO in ROMA.

The statue was purchased on 27 September 1807, together with the bulk of the Borghese sculpture collection, by NAPOLEONE BONAPARTE, brother-in-law of Principe CAMILLO BORGHESE, and was transported from Rome between 1808 and 1811.

It was recorded in the LOUVRE by Mrs. starke who visited it in the spring of 1817 and was catalogued as on display there in 1820.

The SENECA was much restored (the arms, the belt, and one thigh were added) and was placed on a vase of africano marble, unhallowed so that it seemed full of water, and reddened in imitation of blood.

The intention was TO PORTRAY SENECA committing suicide in a bath, his limbs weakened as tehe blood drains out of his cut weins.

The idea was presumably inspired by the similarty of the head with the type of PORTRAIT BUSTS which FULVIO ORSINI identified as SENECA because it resembled an inscribed portrait on a contorniate (now lost).

Although this identification was only published in 1598 (when a bust of SENECA was also recorded in an inventory) it was likely to have been current at an earlier date and Vacca had probably described this statue as a Seneca four years earlier.

The BORGHESE statue was drawn in its restored state by RUBENS probably in 1608, and his painting of the "MORTE DI SENECA" of not much later was closely based on the antique prototype, as was Sandrart's painting of the subject in the next generation: in the latter the modern vase was reverently introduced like the attribute of a Christian martyr.

"If our sculptors," wrote the ABATE RAGUENET in 1700 -- oblivious to the large contribution modern sculptors had indeed made to the statue, "knew how to make a COMPARABLY EXPRESSIVE CHRIST it could be depended on to bring tears to all Christian eyes, for the expression alone of this dying pagan excites sorrow in all who see him".

ALTHOUGH there were many prints of the statue it does not seem to have been copied -- at least on a large scale (an intaglio of the subject was offered for sale by Wedgwood) -- and it was obviously no more suitable than a decapitated saint as an ornament for the dining room or pleasure garden, at least in the eighteenth-century.

As the RICHARDSONS observed, "his air is savage and very disagreeable; so that if this statue has any fault, I think it is that he seems to be a criminal that has been long kept in a dungeon before his execution ; for his hair is all neglected and nasty."

DE BROSSES also found the figure distasteful.

But LALANDE later in the century, still considered it to be a masterpiece and remarked, typically, on how edifying it was to witness the death of the virtuous, and BARNEY in 1770 thought it 'wonderfully fine', although too young to be the dying philosopher.

FOR HERDER, writing in the previous year, it was 'the false Seneca'.

But then HERDER, unlike Burney, had read WINCKELMANN's "MONUMENTI ANTICHI INEDITI" of 1767.

WINCKELMANN pointed to the similarity between the Borghese statue and several similar figures in Roman collections (two in the VILLA ALBANI and one in the PAMFILI collection which was acquired by the MUSEO-PIO CLEMENTINO, Vaticano).

These statues were ALL of old men, holding baskets or pails and were, WINCKELMANN proposes, meant as 'slaves from ancient comedies'.

Some people wished to associate them with slaves who served at the ROMAN BATHS, but VISCONTI, accepting the theory in general, believed them to be the OLD FISHERMEN who featured in Greek comedy and in the "RUDENS" of PLAUTO.

Visconti's has remained the usual interpretation ever since.

By 1800 it seemed obvious that 'the abject expression of the face, and the stiff inclination of the body' were 'fitter for the wash-tube than for the solemn act of libation to Giove', and if there were some resemblance with the busts of SENECA then, the Scottish traveler Joseph Forsyth continued breeziliy, 'these busts are all ANONYMOUS, authenticated by NO MODEL, and as questionable as the genius and virtue of SENECA himself!"

No one seems to have clung to the old idea and it is surprising that this figure was NOT separated from the vase until after 1896 (the removal had taken place by 1922), even though the guidebooks to the VILLA BORGHESE and some of the statue's keenest admirers had NOT ONLY ADMITTED THAT HIS ACCESSORY WAS *MODERN* but disliked it.

The startling change of identity led to a corresponding DECLINE of interest and even Mrs. Starke awarded it only only one exclamation mark.

MOREOVER, sensational polychrome realism was never less appreciated than in the early nineteenth century and in the Louvre catalogue of 1820 sculptors were warned NOT to imitate the statue.

The SENECA is considered by BIEBER to be a Roman copy of an original HELLENISTIC statue of a fisherman.