Castor and Pollux (Prado)

Infobox Sculpture


title = Castor and Pollux
(San Ildefonso Group)
artist = Unknown
year = 1st century AD
type = White marble
height =
inch =
city = Madrid
museum = Museo del PradoThe Castor and Pollux group (also known as the San Ildefonso Group, after San Ildefonso (Segovia, Spain), the location of the palace of La Granja at which it was kept until 1839) is a 1st century AD ancient Roman sculptural group, now in the Museo del Prado (Madrid).

Drawing on 5th and 4th century BC Greek sculptures in the Praxitelean tradition, such as the Apollo Sauroctonos and the "Westmacott Ephebe" without copying any single known Greek sculpture, it shows two idealised nude male youths, both with laurel wreaths, leaning on each other, and with a small female figure on an altar to their left (usually interpreted as a statue of a female divinity), holding a sphere (variously interpreted as an egg or pomegranate). The group itself is 161cm high and is now accepted as portraying Castor and Pollux.

Identification

The lefthand figure was originally headless but was restored in the seventeenth century, the heyday of interpretive restorations, by Ippolito Buzzi, when the sculpture was in the collection of Ludovico Cardinal Ludovisi [It was listed in the Ludovisi collection in 1623, as portraying the Dioscuri. (Haskell and Penny 1981:cat. no. 19)] using a Hadrianic-era (ca. 130) bust of Antinous of the Apollo-Antinous type from another statue [The head has itself had its nose, throat and sections of its wreath and hair restored.] The identification of the figures inspired many choices of male pairs during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the 19th century, it became known as "Antinous and Hadrian's genius" (to get over the problem of them both being youths, whereas actually it was an important feature of Antinous' relationship with Hadrian that Antinous was a youthful eromenos and Hadrian an elder erastes), "Antinous and a sacrificial daemon" (referencing the myth that Antinous had killed himself as a sacrifice to lengthen Hadrian's life), or simply as Antinous and Hadrian pledging their fidelity to one another.

All these identifications are now thought to be erroneous, simply due to the figure's restoration as Antinous, and the group is now accepted as Castor and Pollux, offering a sacrifice to Persephone. Such an identification is based on the right-hand figure, who holds two torches, one downturned (on a flower-wreathed altar) and one upturned (behind his back), and on identifying the woman's sphere as an egg (like that from which the Dioscuri were born). The interpretation was supported by Goethe, who owned a cast of the group. [ [http://www.antinoos.info/copies1.htm Copies of famoust Antinous-Sculptures ] ". antinoos.info. Retrieved on 22 March, 2007.]

Other alternative identifications in the past have included: [ [http://museoprado.mcu.es/cuadro_marzo_ingles.html Museo Nacional del Prado: Página no encontrada ] ]
*Hypnos and Thanatos, interpreting the sphere as a pomegranate, symbol of death
*Corydon and Alexis
*Winckelmann's suggestion of Orestes and Pylades offering a sacrifice to the statue of goddess Artemisia, which they wanted to seize, or in front of the tomb of murdered Agamemnon. Winckelmann was the first to publish the sculpture, in "Monumenti Antichi Inediti" 1767, pp xxi-xxii. [ [http://www.homoerotimuseum.net/eur/eur05/132.html] ; Haskell and Penny 1981:174 note 21]

tyle

The work is an outstanding example of neo-Attic eclecticism frequent at the end of the republic and during the first decades of the Empire, around the Augustan period, combining two different aesthetic streams: whilst the right-hand youth is Polyclitean, the left-hand one is in a softer, more sensual and Praxitelean style. [ [http://www.skulpturhalle.ch/sammlung/highlights/2003/06/ildefonso.html Homepage der Skulpturhalle Basel] . Skulpturhalle Basel, 2008. Retrieved on 22 March, 2008.] The Praxitelising character has led to this sculptor or the original of which it is a copy being attributed to one of Praxiteles's pupils.Fact|date=February 2007

History

Its findsite is unknown, but by 1623 it was in the Ludovisi collection at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome, where the Ludovisi restorer, the sculptor Ippolito Buzzi (1562-1634), restored it that year. [A "Hermaphroditus" belonging to Ludovisi was restored by Buzzi, 1621-23; it was later purchased by Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and is in the Uffizi. (Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, "Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900" (Yale University Press) 1981, p. 235.)] Nicolas Poussin ("illustration, left") saw it in the Ludovisi collection or in that of Cardinal Camillo Massimo, who owned it later. [The Cardinal owned Poussin's "Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus", now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; James Thompson, "Nicolas Poussin" "The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin" New Series, 50.3, (Winter 1992:1, 3-56) p 13f.] Poussin's sketch was not intended as a faithful representation of the sculpture, but to be stored and referred to, as part of his visual repertory of antiquities, which was extensive and which made its presence felt in most of his paintings. In his sketch of the San Ildefonso group Poussin has made minor adjustments to the poses, but his major change is in transforming the lithe adolescents into more muscular athletes or heroes. ["ibidem".]

Its reputation soon spread and shortly after 1664 it was acquired by Queen Christina of Sweden to be a part of the large art collection that she gathered during her stay in Rome. The ancient sculptures in that collection were transferred to the Odescalchi who, in 1724, offered this group to Philip V of Spain. Philip's second wife Isabella Farnese (from the Farnese of Parma, which had a history of sculpture collecting) acquired it at above-market price for him and had it sent to the Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso (Segovia). From there it came into the Prado (catalogue number Catalogue Nr. E.28).

Copies

The erroneous identification with Antinous generated high interest in the sculpture, with large numbers of copies being produced, largely made in Italy and Northern Europe based on plaster casts rather than made in Spain and based on the original there. These inevitably stoked the interest by obscuring the fact that the Antinous head was in fact a restoration, instead smoothing the two into a meaningful whole (as did the casts on which they were based).

Notes

References

*Caroline Vout, "Antinous: The Face of the Antique" (Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, 2006), p83
*Jules David Prown, 'Benjamin West and the Use of Antiquity' ("American Art", Vol. 10, No. 2 - Summer, 1996), pp. 28-49
* [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2006/2006-02-36.html Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2006.02.36 - Stephan F. Schröder, Katalog der antiken Skulpturen des Museo del Prado in Madrid. Vol. 2: Idealplastik. Mainz am Rhein: von Zabern, 2004. Pp. xii, 537. ISBN 3-8053-1758-1. €86.00.]
*Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, "Taste and the Antique" (Yale University Press) 1981.
*Viktor Rydberg, Romerska dagar (Roman Days, 1877)
*John Addington Symonds, [http://www.liminalityland.com/symonds.htm Excerpts from "Antinous," in 'Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece'] - "could we but understand [the group's] meaning clearly, the mystery of Antinous would be solved"

External links

* [http://www.museodelprado.es/en/ingles/collection/on-line-gallery/on-line-gallery/obra/offering-by-orestes-and-pylades-san-ildefonso-group/ Prado link (English)]
* [http://www.antinoos.info/copies1.htm Copies]
* [http://brianabbott.net/travels/spainmorocco/picturepages/ABBOTT0-R6-031-14.php#content Image]
* [http://www.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-475-768-C&PHPSESSID=441l0v3eej2h9arhe7epils6t2&scache=2sccu2bu8h&searchdb=scran Copy] by Joseph Nollekens at the Victoria and Albert Museum
** [http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=867402916&context=pool-54893064@N00&size=o Another view (large)] (Flickr)
** [http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=867402924&context=pool-54893064@N00&size=o Back view (large)] (Flickr)
*** (The Flickr images were taken after the statue was moved to the British Galleries; previously it had stood against a wall, preventing its back from being photographed)
* [http://www.bhood.co.uk/classics/images/castor_p.jpgRe-created using 3D computer generated characters] [http://www.bhood.co.uk/classics/ as part of 'Classics' by Beverley Hood, 2001]