Herma of Posidippus
Roman Art
The Herma was originally located in the garden of Villa Giulia in Via Flaminia in Rome, which was owned by Pope Julius III. In 1562, Pope Pius IV donated a vineyard near the Villa to Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who died in the same year, leaving everything to his brother, the future Grand Duke Ferdinand. This allowed to transfer the ownership of the garden and all its possessions to the Medici family, including this herma, which was moved with other similar pieces to the garden of Villa Medici, also in Rome. In a villa, this type of herma used to be placed along the outer sides of the four largest compartments of the parterre or along the hedges of the square. This function as a “boundary” takes up the original role of the Greek herma, namely the protection of wayfarers along roads and crossroads. However, in Roman times the herma was used mainly for decorative purposes and often - as in the case of this work - featured a head-portrait.
This work arrived in Florence at the end of the 18th century, when the Medici family decided to transfer their collections to the capital of the Grand Duchy, but it was registered for the first time in the Gallery's inventories only in 1825 (no. 381).
The state of preservation is acceptable: the surface appears corroded and some chipping can be found on the body, left cheek and eyebrows. However, this herma remains very important as it is preserved in its entirety: only the lower part of the nose and small parts of the auricles have been restored.
The herma portrays a beardless man with a severe look. The oval of the face is wide and characterised by a certain realism that allows to recognise a man of advanced age: the forehead, which has a straight profile and is partially covered by the hair, is in fact slightly marked, as well as the naso-labial folds. The eyebrows are highlighted by the depth of the eye sockets and converge at the root of the nose, which is slightly recessed. The eyes are elongated and present heavy eyelids furrowed by marked dark rings. The mouth is tight and the horizontal furrow under the lower lip is well marked, as it is the dimple on the chin. The hair is characterised by long, well-combed locks, but with little volume. In addition, since it is precisely worked over the entire skull surface, the statue could be observed from all sides. We know of a second replica of this type: a head that is currently preserved in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva.
We owe the identification of the subject to Klaus Fittschen, who compared the head preserved in Geneva with a statue from the Vatican Museums bearing the inscription POSEIDIPPOS on the plinth; therefore, also the herma in the Uffizi should be identified with the same man. Posidippus was an important playwright, exponent of the New Comedy, who lived between the end of the 4th and the middle of the 3rd century B.C. and was active in Athens. The creation of the original prototype dates back to the middle of the 3rd century B.C., probably just after Posidippus death, and forms part of the series of individual portraits of poets displayed in the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens (Paus. I, 21.1). Later, the Roman replicas were created based on that archetype, including the Florentine herma, which dates back to the mid-first century B.C.
Lastly, the body of the herma is of considerable height and presents a quadrangular cross-section with a slight tapering downwards. At the shoulders, it is possible to see the cavities, which are slightly uneven but certainly have never been restored. All that remains of the phallus that was originally attached to the body is the engraved outline and part of the clip used to fix it.
A.Cecchi, C. Gasparri (a cura di), La Villa Médicis, IV: Le collezioni del cardinale Ferdinando I. I dipinti e le sculture, p. 330, Roma, 2009; R. Di Cesare in Ritratti. Le tante facce del potere, p. 192, n. 247, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Musei Capitolini 10 marzo – 25 settembre 2011), a cura di E. La Rocca, C. Parisi Presicce, Roma, 2011, con bibliografia precedente; A. M. Nardon, Erma di Posidippo in Divina Simulacra. Capolavori di scultura classica della Galleria degli Uffizi, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, 12 dicembre 2023 – 30 giugno 2024), a cura di F. Paolucci, pp. 70 – 71, Livorno: Sillabe, 2023, e bibliografia precedente