Marble Bust of Solon, Rome, 17th century

Rome, 17th century, After the Antique
Solon of Athens
Marble, on a circular marble socle
87 cm. / 34 ins overall

PROVENANCE:
The Earls of Hopetoun, Hopetoun House, Scotland, probably since the 18th or early 19th century; By descent to Adrian Hope, 4th Marquess of Linlithgow (b. 1946), Hopetoun House; Hopetoun House sale, Christie’s, 19th-20th July 1993

This rare, monumental marble bust is after an ancient portrait identified as the Greek statesman and poet, Solon of Athens, regarded as one of the “Seven Wise Men” of ancient Greece.

It has impressive provenance, having come from the collections of the Earls of Hopetoun at Hopetoun House, a magnificent Palladian mansion in West Lothian, Scotland. It is likely to have been acquired in Italy in the eighteenth century either for Charles Hope, 1st Earl of Hopetoun (1681-1742) or his son, John, 2nd Earl of Hopetoun (1704-1781), who employed the architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) to make purchases of paintings and marbles whilst on his Grand Tour in 1754-58.

The head of the present bust is clearly based on a portrait herm now in Naples (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. no. 6143). That bust came from the Farnese collection in Rome, whose large collection of antiquities from their Roman palazzo and other residences were removed to Naples in the eighteenth century.

The manner of carving of this bust, with its voluminous drilled curls of the beard and fine chiselling of the relatively shallow curls of hair of the head, executed using a toothed claw chisel, is consistent with Roman sculpture during the Baroque period. The drapery of the present bust, which imitates the himation worn by Greek philosophers or statesmen depicted in ancient standing statues, exhibits the crumpled folds of drapery typical of Baroque sculpture, albeit in a more restrained manner due to its all’antica subject. The monumental size of the present bust is also typical of the grand scale of Roman Baroque sculpture, suggesting that it was commissioned for a large palazzo or villa complex, perhaps by a patron with a love of ancient Greek history.

Solon of Athens (c. 630-c. 570 BC) was born into a noble Athenian family of moderate wealth and became an important politician and legislator of Athens, hence why he is also known by the epithet ‘Solon the Lawgiver’. His codes became the foundation of Athens’s statute laws until the early fifth century BC and his laws embodied the Greek virtue of moderation. In a list accepted by Plato, Solon was lauded as one of the “Seven Wise Men” of Greek politics and philosophy, a testimony to his esteemed reputation in ancient Greece.

Full essay available on request.

RELATED LITERATURE:
Andrea Bacchi, Scultura del ‘600 a Roma, Milan, 1996, pl. 634; Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique. New Haven, 1982, p. 76; Oswyn Murray, Early Greece, London, 1993, p. 20, 141-42; Gisela Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks. London, 1965, p. 86, fig. 326; Arnold Rueschi, Guida illustrata del Museo nazionale di Napoli, Naples, 1911, p. 263, no. 1112