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拍品专文
This over-lifesized head of an Egyptian ruler boasts an exceptionally illustrious provenance, tracing its lineage back to Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke (1656-1733), who assembled an impressive collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities at Wilton House, the family’s country manor in Salisbury. First published in the early 18th century, the head has been extensively written about in diverse publications ranging from Adolf Michaelis’ seminal Ancient Marbles in Great Britain to an early 19th century poem by John Wolcot that satirized King George III’s visit to Wilton house. In the latter, the head is used as a comedic device when the King mistakes it for a depiction of an English lord. Lord Pembroke corrects the King by telling him it is actually Sesostris, the Pharaoh from the 12th dynasty mentioned by Herodotus in his Histories. This attribution, while indeed closer in accuracy than a British nobleman, is also incorrect and points to the difficulty in ascribing a clear identity to the portrait.
To begin examining the question of identity, it is important to study the formal elements of the portrait. The King is depicted wearing a striped nemes-headdress once fronted by a now-damaged uraeus cobra. The modelling of the face and the treatment of the eyes, nose and lips bear the stylistic hallmarks associated with the Royal sculpture of the 30th Dynasty, features which continue into the early Ptolemaic Period. Although the head has been known for some time in the Egyptological literature, color photographs from various angles were not available to earlier researchers, factors which might have contributed to some confusion over the identity of this portrait.
In fact, the first serious Egyptological study was undertaken by J. Josephson (Egyptian Royal Sculpture of the Late Period, 400-246 B.C., p. 26), who only knew the head from black and white images. This led him to identify the material from which it is sculpted as “grey granite” rather than red, to characterize the face as lacking significant modelling, and to state that “so little pleating of the headdress remains that it is impossible to ascertain if the pleating is two-toned.” These aspects in combination with comparison to the colossal limestone portrait of Nectanebo I from Hermopolis, now in the Egyptian Museum (op. cit., pl. 3b) lead Josephson to attribute this colossal portrait to that king.
Since there are very few firmly dated portraits of Nectanebo I and II, the issue of identification is difficult, but some conclusions are possible. A comparison might be made with the head now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, attributed to Nectanebo II, (accession no. 2000.637 and op. cit., pl. 10c), which features sensitive modelling of the face. As in the case of the Wilton House head, the eyes are delicately rendered, and the eyebrows are naturalistic, and do not feature plastic outlines. A particularly important comparison is the quartzite portrait in the University of Pennsylvania Museum (accession no. E14303, op. cit., pl. 10a), also ascribed to Nectanebo II. Here we see many features of the Wilton House portrait, including the shape of the eyebrows, the tilt and modelling of the eyes, the spread of the nose, and the deeply-drilled corners of the mouth, with its slight smile.
Counter to this, portraits of Nectanebo I seem to feature a simpler smile and plastic eyebrows, providing an impression that owes a lot to earlier Saite royal images, and ultimately to prototypes of the early 12th Dynasty and to the 18th Dynasty. It should also be mentioned that early Ptolemaic Egyptian style portraits owe much to those of the 30th Dynasty, in particular to portraits of Nectanebo II, the last native ruler of Egypt. According to S.-A. Ashton (Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture from Egypt: the Greek and Egyptian Traditions and their Interaction, PhD. dissertation, King’s College London, 1999, p. 184), “This similarity was probably deliberate and a way of associating the new dynasty with the Egyptian kings of the past.”
Productive comparisons may be made between the Wilton House head and relief portraits of the Nectanebos, which in contrast to sculptures in the round, are plentiful and well-dated by cartouches. For example, see the relief from Behbeit el-Hagar, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (D. Arnold, Temples of the Last Pharaohs, pp. 125–27, fig. 84), which depicts Nectanebo II. This displays the soft, rounded modeling of the Wilton head, the slightly tilted eye, and the arc of the naturalistically rendered eyebrows. One may contrast the vastly different relief portraits of Nectanebo I, which are very fleshy if not obese in character and who are described as “beaky and jowly” (see for example the relief in the British Museum, pp. 282-283 in N. Strudwick, Masterpieces of Ancient Egypt).
In summation, after careful consideration, this large and impressive red granite portrait of a Pharaoh, the Wilton House head, can be attributed to Nectanebo II.
To begin examining the question of identity, it is important to study the formal elements of the portrait. The King is depicted wearing a striped nemes-headdress once fronted by a now-damaged uraeus cobra. The modelling of the face and the treatment of the eyes, nose and lips bear the stylistic hallmarks associated with the Royal sculpture of the 30th Dynasty, features which continue into the early Ptolemaic Period. Although the head has been known for some time in the Egyptological literature, color photographs from various angles were not available to earlier researchers, factors which might have contributed to some confusion over the identity of this portrait.
In fact, the first serious Egyptological study was undertaken by J. Josephson (Egyptian Royal Sculpture of the Late Period, 400-246 B.C., p. 26), who only knew the head from black and white images. This led him to identify the material from which it is sculpted as “grey granite” rather than red, to characterize the face as lacking significant modelling, and to state that “so little pleating of the headdress remains that it is impossible to ascertain if the pleating is two-toned.” These aspects in combination with comparison to the colossal limestone portrait of Nectanebo I from Hermopolis, now in the Egyptian Museum (op. cit., pl. 3b) lead Josephson to attribute this colossal portrait to that king.
Since there are very few firmly dated portraits of Nectanebo I and II, the issue of identification is difficult, but some conclusions are possible. A comparison might be made with the head now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, attributed to Nectanebo II, (accession no. 2000.637 and op. cit., pl. 10c), which features sensitive modelling of the face. As in the case of the Wilton House head, the eyes are delicately rendered, and the eyebrows are naturalistic, and do not feature plastic outlines. A particularly important comparison is the quartzite portrait in the University of Pennsylvania Museum (accession no. E14303, op. cit., pl. 10a), also ascribed to Nectanebo II. Here we see many features of the Wilton House portrait, including the shape of the eyebrows, the tilt and modelling of the eyes, the spread of the nose, and the deeply-drilled corners of the mouth, with its slight smile.
Counter to this, portraits of Nectanebo I seem to feature a simpler smile and plastic eyebrows, providing an impression that owes a lot to earlier Saite royal images, and ultimately to prototypes of the early 12th Dynasty and to the 18th Dynasty. It should also be mentioned that early Ptolemaic Egyptian style portraits owe much to those of the 30th Dynasty, in particular to portraits of Nectanebo II, the last native ruler of Egypt. According to S.-A. Ashton (Ptolemaic Royal Sculpture from Egypt: the Greek and Egyptian Traditions and their Interaction, PhD. dissertation, King’s College London, 1999, p. 184), “This similarity was probably deliberate and a way of associating the new dynasty with the Egyptian kings of the past.”
Productive comparisons may be made between the Wilton House head and relief portraits of the Nectanebos, which in contrast to sculptures in the round, are plentiful and well-dated by cartouches. For example, see the relief from Behbeit el-Hagar, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (D. Arnold, Temples of the Last Pharaohs, pp. 125–27, fig. 84), which depicts Nectanebo II. This displays the soft, rounded modeling of the Wilton head, the slightly tilted eye, and the arc of the naturalistically rendered eyebrows. One may contrast the vastly different relief portraits of Nectanebo I, which are very fleshy if not obese in character and who are described as “beaky and jowly” (see for example the relief in the British Museum, pp. 282-283 in N. Strudwick, Masterpieces of Ancient Egypt).
In summation, after careful consideration, this large and impressive red granite portrait of a Pharaoh, the Wilton House head, can be attributed to Nectanebo II.