Found in Livia’s villa
In 1863 excavators working at the villa of Livia, Augustus’s wife, at Prima Porta just north of Rome, found a marble statue of the emperor just over two metres tall. It went to the Vatican and became the best-known portrait of the man who ended the civil wars and ruled Rome as its first emperor, from 27 BCE to 14 CE.
The date is less simple than it looks. The breastplate refers to an event of 20 BCE, but many scholars think the marble was carved later, perhaps after Augustus died in 14 CE, as a copy of a lost original, possibly in bronze. Livia may have kept it at her villa as a memorial to her husband.
A pose borrowed from Greece
Augustus stands with his weight on the right leg and the left leg relaxed, the balanced stance Greek sculptors called contrapposto. The model is clear to anyone who knows Greek art: the pose and proportions follow a famous statue of the fifth century BCE, the Spear-Bearer by Polykleitos. Rome dressed its new ruler in the authority of Classical Greece.
What the breastplate says
The breastplate is the statue’s message board. At its centre a Parthian, in trousers and a beard, hands back a Roman military standard to a figure in Roman armour. The standards had been lost when the general Crassus was defeated by the Parthians in 53 BCE, and in 20 BCE Augustus recovered them through negotiation, without a battle. Who the Roman figure is remains debated: suggestions include Tiberius, the god Mars or a generic soldier.
Around this scene the whole universe watches. The sky god Caelus spreads his cloak above, the Sun drives his chariot, and at the bottom Earth reclines with children and fruit. Personifications of conquered provinces sit at the sides. The meaning is that the return of the standards marked a new age of peace under Augustus, guaranteed by the gods.
Bare feet and a small Cupid
A general in armour should wear boots, yet Augustus is barefoot. In Greek and Roman art, bare feet belonged to gods and heroes, so the detail lifts him above ordinary men without calling him a god outright.
Beside his right leg a small Cupid rides a dolphin. Cupid was the son of Venus, and the family of Julius Caesar, into which Augustus was adopted, claimed descent from Venus. The dolphin has been read as a reminder of the sea, from which Venus was born, and perhaps of Augustus’s naval victory at Actium in 31 BCE. The little figure also does a practical job: it supports the weight of the marble leg.
A statue in colour
Like most ancient sculpture, the statue was originally painted. Traces of colour survive on the surface, and a cleaning begun in 2002 by the Vatican Museums’ stone restoration laboratory brought more of them to light. A painted cast made in 2004 colours the cloak, the breastplate, the hair and the eyes, and leaves the skin unpainted. It is a hypothesis, and some art historians find the result unconvincing. Greek and Roman marble was rarely left white, even if that is how we are used to seeing it.
Where to see it
The statue stands in the Braccio Nuovo, the New Wing of the Chiaramonti Museum, in the Vatican Museums in Vatican City.
Sources
- Vatican Museums, “Statue of Augustus of Prima Porta”, Braccio Nuovo.
- Smarthistory, “Augustus of Primaporta”.
- P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1988).
- Digital Sculpture Project, “Augustus of Prima Porta” (P. Liverani on the Vatican polychrome reconstruction).
