Hora-Carpo

Hora-Carpo, Carrara marble, first century A.D. with mid 16th century integrations ,height 1,51 m. Florence – Galleria degli Uffizi – inv. 1914, n. 136. For more than four centuries the statue of Hora has embellished
the eastern corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, standing out, among
the army of marbles that decorate the Vasarian complex, for the
refinement of its modelling that portrays with surprising realism
the impalpable robe worn by the young woman. These “thin
garments” were what most struck Giorgio Vasari when, in 1568,
he saw the statue displayed in one of the rooms of Palazzo
Pitti, interpreting it as a portrayal of Pomona, the Roman goddess
of fruits. The grapes, pears, pomegranates and walnuts
that almost spill from the folds of the cloak the woman holds
in her lap, left no doubt about the character of this fascinating
female personage, who must have been linked to the fertility of
the earth and the generative force of nature. So this 16 century
interpretation was not wholly inaccurate, though today, thanks
to other examples of this kind of statue, we can more precisely
identify the young woman as a Hora, one of the daughters of
Zeus and Themis, goddess of justice, who watch over the natural
cycles of the year. Bringers of seasonal gifts, but also of
fascination and talent for mortals, the Horae watched over the
birth of men, exercising upon them a beneficial and healthy influence.
The Horae, three in number according to Hesiod (Hes.,
Theogonia, vv. 901 et seq.), were, by their life-giving nature, inevitably
linked to the idea of Spring and the rebirth of nature after
the rigours of winter, so much so that in the Homeric hymns
(Hom., Hymn to Ceres vv 54 and 192), it is they who bring back
Persephone to the Earth from the Underworld, thus marking
the start of the warm season. But their action was not limited to
spring fruits, it also extended to protecting and favouring crops
of other seasons, including the autumn, of which we see echoes
in the fruit chosen to nestle in the robe of the Florentine
statue.
The quality of the Uffizi marble, probably dating back to the
first century A.D., justified the intervention of an excellent 16th century sculpture to integrate the parts missing when it was discovered:
the head, parts of the hands and the base. The taste
of the time did not accept the aesthetics of the fragment and it
was necessary always to restore formal unity to the damaged
ancient sculptures given back by the Earth. In this case too, the
unity of the original figure was recomposed thanks to the ability
of a sculptor whose name we unfortunately do not know. Despite
the later integrations, the statue still preserves much of the
vital and airy composition of the classical model. The draping,
which clings to the woman’s body in her rapid movement, highlights
the shape of the body rather than hiding it, creating, in the
lower part of the figure, a play of folds blown by the wind that
is almost a virtuoso execution with its irregular and contorted
movement. In this description of the robe, which is impalpable
and clings to the muscles like wet fabric, we cannot help recognising
the echo of Attic models of the post-Phidias School,
which have in the Nike of Paionos in Olympia and in the reliefs
of the balustrade of the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis
in Athens their most accomplished examples. But other clues,
such as the mannered and colourful taste in portraying the
lower part of the robe, presuppose experience of an already
mature Hellenism, suggesting that a Hellenic archetype of the
third or second century BC was the prototype from which the
portrayals we know of the Horae were derived. Among these
copies, spread among the Vatican, Tarragona and Venice, the
Florentine statue stands out for the sensitivity with which it portrays
the lightness of the figure, which seems frozen in a dance
step rather than in a normal walk.
Aby Warburg, at the end of the 19th century, recognised in the sculpture the direct inspiration drawn by Sandro Botticelli for
the figure of Flora portrayed in his famous Primavera. The position
of the figure, the act of bringing the hands into the lap to
hold the folds of the garment filled with flowers, but, above all
the description of a light and ethereal robe seemed to betray a
close link between this iconographic type and that portrayed in
the 15th century work. But to conclude that it was the Uffizi marble
that was the model for Botticelli’s work cannot be demonstrated
with certainty. Complex reasons relating to collections
rather suggest that Botticelli, during his stay in Rome between
1481 and 1482, saw other sculptures that reproduced this prototype
statue, for example a replica that has now been lost but
was once housed in the no longer existing Del Bufalo garden.
But regardless of exactly which marbled the painters saw, there
is no doubt that the Uffizi statue is the best incarnation of an
iconographic type which, with its lightness and fine modelling,
profoundly influenced the 15th century effigy of Flora, a perfect
example of the deep relation between classic and modern art
that was the origin of the Italian Renaissance.
Fabrizio Paolucci
Director, department of Classical Antiquity of the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence