The monumental bearded head would seem to be inspired by the image of Zeus/Jupiter, supreme deity of Greek-Roman religion and mythology, or by a prototype used for the representation of paternal divinities, such as Jupiter, Neptune or Serapis, according to a physiognomic model and expressive handed down to Western figurative culture through the famous statue sculpted by Phidias in the 5th Century. B.C. for the temple of Olympia and later from the simulacrum of the God created by the Athenian Apolionios for the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill in Rome.
That effigy, now attested by one of the most famous imperial replicas such as the bust of Jupiter of Otricoli (Vatican City, Vatican Museums), is here recovered and reused in monumental proportions within a Christian figurative imagery to portray a character who we could presumably identify in a Prophet, a Patriarch or perhaps in God the Father, whose character emphasis is returned through a powerful and luxuriant hair, a bombastic and symmetrical beard, granite arches of the eyebrows deeply carved and protruding, a hieratic and penetrating gaze. These characteristics, emblems of moral rigor and severity, also reveal a philological archeology, at the same time also show the author's profound interest in showing the earthly nature of the character, exploring its manifestations and expressive facets, as we can see above all in the intensity of the eyebrow arches, in the drama of the forehead and in the intensity of the fixed and magnetic gaze.
Worked for a strictly frontal view, as we can see from the morphology of the back just roughened and bearing the traces of an anchoring pin to the wall surface, the head could originally have been placed in the valve of a niche or in an architectural oculus in the center of a grandiose portal or arch of access, or used as a central iconographic element within a larger narrative high-relief.
The work is a precious testimony of the cultural climate matured in Rome after the mid- fifteenth Century during the pontificate of Pio II Piccolomini (1458-1464), characterized by a passionate archeology, by an obsessive and pragmatic recovery of ancient sculpture and celebratory imperial architecture. The protagonist of that historical moment was Leon Battista Alberti, a theorist of a systematic and rational recovery of classical vestiges, but also an advocate of a critical, non-imitative revival of an autonomous interpretation and a
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re-actualization of ancient architecture and statuary. Always thanks to Alberti, with his De Statua, was laid the historical foundations for the recovery of the 'colossal statuary', in bronze and marble, an application of the sculpture abandoned by the ancient period, but rediscovered and reused in this precise historical juncture to celebrate the glories and exalt the power of papal Rome (Caglioti 2007; Antoniutti 2010).
The greatest exponent of this cultural climate was undoubtedly the sculptor Paolo Taccone da Sezze, better known as Paolo Romano, documented in activity in Rome in 1451 in the service of Niccolò V, then between 1453 and 1458 in the prestigious Arco di Castelnuovo in Naples alongside Isaia da Pisa, finally at the service of Pio II Piccolomini becoming the protagonist of the papal statuary, as Giorgio Vasari remembers him a century later (Angelini 2005, pp. 37-38; Caglioti 2007; Gallavotti Cavallero 2008; La Bella 2010, with previous bibliography). Famous for being among the first to rediscover the ways of imperial and late antique sculpture, among his most famous works we have the Ciborio degli Apostoli for the high altar of St. Peter (ca.1467-1470; today reassembled in a fragmentary way in the Ottagono di Simon Mago), a plastic-architectural complex started under Pio II and continued with Sisto IV, originally composed of a square balustrade, supported by porphyry columns, formed by four narrative high-reliefs depicting the Fasti dei Principi degli Apostoli, inspired by reliefs of the Trajan's column and the arch of Constantine, accompanied by minor panels with male figures within classical architecture, by two large statues of Pietro e Paolo and by a statuary series of the Dodici Apostoli (F. Caglioti, in La Basilica di San Pietro 2000 , pp. 811-821; 860-864; Angelini 2005, pp. 37-38; Caglioti 2007; La Bella 2010).
Paolo Romano, however, should be remembered for being the sculptor who brought about the definitive rebirth of classical statuary, from the drill processing methods, to the recovery of physiognomic and expressive prototypes, up to the recovery, on the basis of the aforementioned Albertian theories, of the genre of colossal statuary . It was to Paolo Romano that Pio II turned to create at least four majestic statues, the first of which in 1461 were the two Apostoli Pietro e Paolo destined for the access stairway of the Vatican Basilica, now preserved in the hall of the old Synod of the Vatican Palaces. The following year he was commissioned to create the large statue of Sant'Andrea for the temple of Ponte Milvio to celebrate the arrival in Rome of the relic of the saint's head, and the following year he was entrusted with the execution of another colossal San Paolo for the churchyard of the Basilica (located on the Milvian Bridge from the sixteenth century) paired with a San Pietro, initially entrusted to Mino da Fiesole (San Pietro, Aula del Capitolo dei Canonici, sacristy).
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Even the monumental head in question, of dimensions that go far beyond the natural, is part of this precise cultural climate. Although not intended for a large statue, as suggested by the morphology of the unworked rear but also the meticulous descriptive attention and the calibrated symmetry of the face, hair and beard, it was born for the high relief decoration of a grandiose architectural complex, how it could have been a portal or archway inside a palace or an ecclesial chapel, or as a monumental protome intended for a cycle of biblical or ancient characters inscribed in garlands or placed on shelves, arranged along the nave of a church, similarly to the cycle of heads sculpted by Nicola Pisano for the lantern of the Cathedral of Siena, or to alternate the arches of a loggia. From a stylistic point of view, the work is firmly connected to the aforementioned Vatican statues by Paolo Romano, bearing close affinities with the face of the San Paolo at Ponte Milvio, of which it replicates the same design of the eyebrow arches, with sharp and protruding profiles, the morphology eyes and
wrinkled forehead, as well as mouth and mustache. But it is above all with the head of the Saint Peter that the most evident commonalities are recorded. The wide and impassive eyes respond to the same expressive direction, the nasal duct and the eyebrow arches seem sculpted following the same design, as well as the animosity of the wide and intense eyes, the majestic mouth, the ductus of beard and nervous hair, at times symmetrical, tangled, which in our case seems to be inverted with respect to the Roman statue.
These are elements that confirm his familiarity with the Roman artistic environment around the early sixties and, above all, with the production of Paolo Romano, engaged in those same years to manage numerous prestigious commissions for Pope Pius II Piccolomini, being flanked by a wealthy workshop to which the multiple physiognomic and expressive variants that can be recorded within the Vatican works refer. However, this is not the case with the work in question which, as mentioned, presents extraordinary stylistic features precisely with one of the first testimonies of colossal statuary attested in Rome to refer directly to the sculptor's hand.
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David Lucidi, June 10, 2022

Bibliography:

- F. Caglioti, Da Alberti a Ligorio, da Maderno a Bernini e a Marchionni: il ritrovamento del 'San Pietro' vaticano di Mino da Fiesole (e di Niccolò Longhi da Viggiù, in “Prospettiva”, 1997, pp. 37-70.
- La Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano, curated by A. Pinelli, 3 voll., Modena 2000.
- A. Angelini, Templi di marmo e tavole quadre. Pio II e le arti nei Commentari, in Pio II e le arti. La
riscoperta dell’antico da Federighi a Michelangelo, Cinisello Balsamo 2005, pp. 19-44.
- F. Caglioti, Paolo Romano copista e falsificatore dell’antico. Il Sacrificio d’Enea agli Uffizi, in La sculpture en Occident. Etudes offertes à Jean-René Gaborit, curated by G. Bresc-Bautier. F. BAron, P. Y. Le Pogam, Paris 2007, pp. 110-121.
- D. Cavallotti Cavallero, La scultura tra antico e rinascenza, in Il ‘400 a Roma. La rinascita delle arti da Donatello a Perugino, catalogue of exhibition, curated by M. G. Bernardini, M. Bussagli, Milano 2008, pp. 71-77.
- A. Antoniutti, L’Idea dell’antico: la trattatistica della scultura, le fonti, le testimonianze, in La forma del Rinascimento, catalogue of exhibition curated by C. Crescentini, C. Strinati, Soveria Mannelli 2010, pp. 141-150.
- C. La Bella, La scuola scultorea romana del secondo Quattrocento. Il Ciborio degli Apostoli e il Monumento a Paolo II: due esempi di scultura in Vaticano, in Ivi, pp. 151-158.