Minerva-Victoria (Minerva in the guise of Victory)
Glencairn Museum
Bryn Athyn, United States
“Glencairn Museum’s Roman and Early Christian Gallery features an eye-catching and well-preserved Roman statue of the goddess Minerva in the guise of Victory (a concept that ancient Greeks and Romans deified). Images of gods and goddesses like this one pervaded both public and private spaces in the ancient Roman world. In addition to cult statues inside temple buildings, Romans saw depictions of deities decorating temple exteriors, public monuments, currency, the walls and floors of houses, and everyday objects like pottery, lamps, personal items, and garden decor. Glencairn’s Minerva-Victoria illustrates ways that such a proliferation of divine images functioned in the Roman world. Depending on the viewer and the context, these images might evoke a variety of ideas in the minds of the people who saw them: the nature of a deity’s power, traditional tales, enduring life concepts, and connections between divine forces and human endeavors.” (Wendy Closterman 2013; see External Link.)
Sources:
- Irene Romano in _Restaging Greek Artworks in Roman Times_, 2018, 23.
- Wendy Closterman, “A Masterpiece in Marble: Glencairn’s Minerva-Victoria,” _Glencairn Museum News_, Number 8, 2013.
- David Gilman Romano and Irene Romano, _Catalogue of the Classical Collections of the Glencairn Museum_, 1999, 15-24.
- Title: Minerva-Victoria (Minerva in the guise of Victory)
- Location Created: Possibly from Cyrene, North Africa
- Physical Dimensions: Height: 1.12 meters
- External Link: https://glencairnmuseum.org/newsletter/august-2013-a-masterpiece-in-marble-glencairns-minerva-victo.html
- Medium: Parian marble
- Further Information: “Frustratingly, we can only speculate about the ancient setting of the Glencairn statue, public or private, sacred, civic or domestic. It may have been displayed in a Roman theater where ideal sculpture was common in the scaenae frons, in the intercolumniations on the stories, or in the orchestra or lower cavea area. Roman amphitheaters were also settings for ideal sculpture, though the Hadrianic amphitheater of Capua is the only one where the sculptural program is very well preserved, especially the free-standing sculptures of the second-floor arcade which included the so-called Capua Aphrodite. The Glencairn Athena/Minerva could also have been incorporated into the decorative and didactic program of an imperial forum basilica. If outdoors for a short period, it may have been part of a commemorative monument of modest proportions, perhaps a victory monument, with the goddess alighting or balancing on the prow of a ship, like the Hellenistic winged Nike of Samothrace or the wingless, striding female figure of the monument from the Agora of Cyrene, or the Roman example that was once on the art market and is now lost. It seems unlikely that it served as an acroterion of a temple since personifications such as Nike/Victoria would be appropriate, but the goddess Athena or other divinities were rarely used in this way. The Glencairn statue would also have been of an appropriate scale and theme for display in the peristyle of a private Roman villa or imperial residence to be enjoyed by a Roman patron.” (Irene Romano in Restaging Greek Artworks in Roman Times, 2018, 23)
- Date: Circa 2nd century AD
- Collection: Roman
- Accession Number: 09.SP.1629
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