Fine Marble bust of Socrates, Italy 19th century

Rome, early 19th century, After the Antique
Marble, on a circular marble socle
49 cm. / 19 ¼ ins high, overall

PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Suffolk, England

This fine neoclassical bust of Socrates is based on an ancient portrait of the Greek philosopher from the Villa Albani, Rome (inv. no. 1040), which was discovered in 1735 in the grounds of a villa in Tusculum, near Rome.

The Albani Socrates was subsequently acquired by Cardinal Allesandro Albani (1692-1779), described as the most ‘enthusiastic and spendthrift of eighteenth-century Roman art patrons’, for his villa-museum (now the Villa Albani-Torlonia) on the Via Salaria. Presumably due to its relatively late discovery in the eighteenth century, there appear to be very few marble copies of the Albani Socrates from the late eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, with most modern busts of the philosopher being based on another ancient portrait in the Capitoline Museum, Rome (Sala dei Filosofi, inv. MC0508).

It is probable that the present bust was carved in a Roman workshop in the early nineteenth century, possibly by a sculptor in the circle of Carlo or Filippo Albacini. The manner of carving, plastic modelling of the facial features and lightly-polished matt finish of the surface are all compatible with the severe, Hellenising style of sculpture present in Rome in the early nineteenth century, which marked the final phase of the Neoclassical movement begun by Antonio Canova.

RELATED LITERATURE:
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 'Taste and the Antique'. New Haven, 1982, p. 63-68; Gisela Richter, 'The Portraits of the Greeks'. London, 1965, p. 13, pl. 21; Edgar Bowron and Joseph Rishel (eds), 'Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century', exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Arts, Philadelphia, and MFA, Houston, 2000, pp. 225-26