Large Athena Minerva Giustinia bust 45″

Description

Large 45″ Bust of goddess Athena Minerva Giustinia bust after museum original. Athena–as goddess of wisdom, skills and warfare–was one of the twelve Olympians. Here she is depicted wearing her traditional helmet. The bust is taken from a full figure sculpture know as the Athena (Minerva) Giustiniani. Athena Giustiniani or Giustiniani Minerva is an Antonine Roman marble copy of a Greek sculpture of Pallas Athena, of the late fifth-early fourth century BCE. It was discovered in the early seventeenth century, reputedly in the ruins of a ten-sided nymphaeum on the Esquiline Hill which thus gained the misnomer the “Temple of Minerva Medica”. The sculpture has often been credited with the quality of a cult image rather than a decorative trophy. The serpent at Athena’s right foot recalls the archaic myth of Erichthonius in his serpent form. The forearms are restorations, as is the spear, needless to say, and the sphinx upon the goddess’s Corinthian helmet. The Minerva Giustiniani as it was called, escaped the fate of the rest of the Giustiniani collection; under Napoleonic occupation, the collection was removed in 1807 to Paris, where it was to some extent broken up. In 1815 all that remained of it, in particular about 170 pictures, was purchased by Frederick William III of Prussia and removed to Berlin, where it formed a portion of the royal museum.