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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
A Botticellesque ‘Venus among Cupids’ in the National Gallery (no. 916) now attributed to Jacopo del Sellajo (pl. III) attracted my attention when I saw it again in July last for the similarity of the composition to the familiar group of Terra Mater and the children as represented on innumerable Roman monuments—a transcript almost of its rendering in the mosaic recently discovered at Antioch by the American mission (pl. iv, i). The influence of the ancient motive is likewise apparent in Sellajo's—or another's —repetition of the ‘Venus and Cupids’ motive in the Louvre (no. 1299—pl. v), and it makes itself felt, though less obviously perhaps, in Botticelli's ‘Venus and Mars’ in the National Gallery (no. 915—pi. vi). The un-Venus like character of Sellajo's goddess had, as I subsequently discovered, struck A. L. Mayer, who thought that the picture might represent an allegory of Fertility (Fruchtbarkeit)–an excellent suggestion, supported by the evidence of the bunch of grapes, from which, however, he omitted to draw the necessary conclusion. The dependence of Botticelli's picture upon an antique model has long been admitted, but the incongruity between the Mars who lies steeped in voluptuous slumber and the demure Florentine lady who faces him in seemly half-sitting posture had scarcely been noted : she, too, recalls Terra Mater, rather than any softly reposing nymph or Venus.
1 Jacopo del Sellajo (1441 or –2 to 1493): Berenson, , Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1932), 526Google Scholar.
2 Published in AJA, xxxviii, 1934Google Scholar, pl. xiiv B (text, p. 205). I owe the photograph to the courtesy of Professor Morey.
3 Berenson, op. cit., 527. Mayer, A. L., however, in Pantheon xi, 1933, 1, 15Google Scholar, inclines to follow Venturi in attributing the Paris picture to ‘Alunno di Domenico,’ a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandajo who collaborated with Botticelli in painting certain cassone-pictures.
4 Tietze-Conrat, E., ‘Botticelli and the Antique,’ Burlington Magazine xlvii, 1925;, 124 ffGoogle Scholar. The three pictures mentioned above make it clear, I think, that some ancient image of Terra Mater was familiar to the Botticelli group of painters.
6 The disputed question as to the original identity of Tellus and Terra Mater need not be discussed here: see Weinstock, in P-W, s.v. ‘Terra’ and in Glotta xxii, 1934, 140 ff.Google Scholar, with full references to the views of Altheim and others. In classical times the two appellatives had become for all purposes interchangeable; but see Wissowa in Roscher, s.v. ‘Tellus,’ and Höfer, ibid., s.v. ‘Terra Mater.’ For recent careful studies of the iconography of Terra Mater see Toynbee, J. M. C., The Hadrianic School, 140 ff.Google Scholar, and Levi, A., La Patera d' argento di Parabiago (Opere d'arte series, 1936), 11 fGoogle Scholar.
5a At times also a snake twines about her neck (cf. the Sassoferrato mosaic, infra p. 117, and n. 17) or shoulders. The motive is commoner in later antiquity and medieval art than in classical times.
5b Apollo and Diana appear here as intercessors between the Earth below and the celestial powers above.
6 My Scultura Romana, pl. 1: the emperor is Marcus Aurelius.
7 In the centre, the two Augusti enthroned; above, the ‘double Heaven’; at their sides the two Caesars. A new publication of the Arch is being prepared by Professor A. Alföldi and Dr. von Schönebeck: plate IX is after one of their photographs, kindly lent by them for reproduction here.
8 My Art in Ancient Rome, fig. 552 (after Gnecchi).
9 According to Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, no. 48, p. 188, the emperor is Anastasius (A.D. 491–518). In both the English and the Italian editions of my Roman Sculpture I followed the old, mistaken interpretation of the Tellus as being the symbol of a conquered province.
10 Goldschmidt Die Elfenbeinskulpturen (1914) i e, 46, pl. XXXV. It is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale (MS Latin, grande reserve, no. 9383), see van Marle, , Iconographie de l'art profane au moyen-âge et a la Renaissance, ii, 383Google Scholar, fig. 311, and Westwood, , Fictile Ivories in South Kensington Museum (1876), p. 110, no. 15Google Scholar.
11 On the other hand Terra, frequently represented on pagan sarcophagi as symbol of re-birth, is entirely absent from Christian sarcophagi (this on the high authority of Monsignor Wilpert), where her place is taken by loftier emblems of resurrection.
12 van Marle, R.,Iconographie, ii, fig. 310, p. 282Google Scholar. I cannot agree with van Marle in calling that suffering figure ‘ce petit monstre.’
13 The group shows excellently in B. Ashmole's photograph (JRS xviii, 1928Google Scholar, pl. xvii, 1).
14 of Gaza, John, de Tabula Mundi, ii, 1–4Google Scholar (ed. Paul Friedländer, whose interesting comment on the passage p. 191 ff., should be read). See also G. Krahmer in his monograph on the Tabula, p. 28 ff. Both Friedländer and Krahmer give instructive reconstructions of the tabula with the group of Ge and the καρποί.
15 Ibid. 41 ff.
16 Robert, , Ant. Sarkophagreliefs, iii, 3, 291Google Scholar: replica in Louvre, ibid. 314.
17 Well reproduced from a new photograph by Levi, La Patera d'argente di Parabiago (Opere d'Arte series, 1936), pl. iv (top).
17a Berenson op. cit., 568. The popular subject exists in several replicas, the best of which is at Berlin (Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, no. 1849—see pl. xii). The well-known replica in the Prado is held to be an inferior version, showing less of the master's hand. For other replicas see the lists in Berenson (op. cit.); Oscar Fischel, Tizian in Klassiker der Kunst series; Bode, , Berliner Museen xxxix (1918), 93 ff.Google Scholar, xlvii (1926), 2 ff.; Wilhelm Suida, Tizian (1933) 115, pl. ccxxvi ff.; etc.
18 of Gaza, John, Tabula, ii, 39 fGoogle Scholar.
19 Plate XIII, from the Prometheus sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum (BSR Cat., p. 132, 13, pl. 34), is after a new photograph kindly given for reproduction by Dr. von Schönebeck. Plate XI (Parabiago) shows Terra Mater with one child perched on the cornucopiae (cf. the similar motive on the Nile statue) and another—presumably the younger—keeping close to her as he points with glee to the approaching procession. Cf. the fragment of a relief in Cleveland, U.S.A., showing Mars holding the cornucopiae upon which perch two infants, at once symbols of fertility and images of the divine twins: Pollack, L., Jahreshefte des Österr. Inst. xxvi, 1930, 136 ffGoogle Scholar.
20 The only example at present known to me is on the pilaster now in the Museo Petriano (my Rom. Sc., 1907, pl. xxxvii). I believe that the nutrix-type in Roman art, with special reference to the Pannonian nutrices, is the subject of a forthcoming paper by Professor Alföldi. The nutrix motive frequently occurs in medieval (more especially Carolingian) art. Plate XIV, from a sacramentary in the Bibliothèque Nationale (MS Latin, grande reserve no. 1141, fol. 6 recto) of the second half of the ninth century (figured in Marie, vanIconographie, ii, 284Google Scholar, fig. 312), shows a Terra Mater with her nurselings reclining among the flowers, so antique in spirit that it might have adorned a wall in Pompeii: cf. the same classic feeling in the Terra Mater of the apocalyptic scene from a codex in Munich reprodused from a new photograph R. Hinks, Carolingian Art, pl. xviii. The mystic meaning attaching to terra nutrix, the ancient κονροτρόΦος, appears, perhaps for the last time, on a relief at Nôtre Dame in Paris (left portal of the north façade), where a young woman kneels before a female figure with full breasts, symbolic of the Earth, eager to drink from the milk of life (E. Mâle, L'art religieux du xiiie siécle en France, p. 56).
21 Examples easily discovered in Toynbee, Hadrianic School and elsewhere.
22 Omitted from the shortened description of the Villa in the third edition of the Führer.
23 The Terra Mater motive occurs on a number of later breastplates. For the present I limit myself to examples from Augustus to the Flavians, merely noting that on Hadrianic breastplates the place of Terra Mater, symbol of universal dominion, seems to be taken by the Wolf and Twins, symbol of Roman supremacy—Olympia, Istanbul, British Museum, and the statue recently discovered in Crete by Sir Arthur Evans: imperial breastplates with ornamentation have been listed by Mancini, G., ‘Le statue loricate imperiali’ in Bull. Com. L, 1923, 151 ffGoogle Scholar.,with full references to previous literature: for the statues mentioned above see his nos. 57, 58, 59, 61, and plates xxi and xxii. What is now needed is a closer grouping of the subjects with a view to their interpretation.
24 Jahreshefte xx, 1919, figs. 14.1, 142, p. 190 ffGoogle Scholar.
25 BMC Emp. ii, p. 384.
26 Amelung, , Vat. Cat., iGoogle Scholar, pl. 21, 129; text, p. 153. The head, an undoubted portrait of Domitian, though once detached seems to belong. Terra Mater, known from the fruit in her lap, differs somewhat from the usual type; she is faced by a Triton with rudder, symbol of the sea.
27 BMC Emp. i, p. 27 If., pl. 47, 2. The Ara Pacis coins of both Nero and Domitian are well reproduced, enlarged, by G. Lugli in Capitolium, 1935.
28 See F. von Duhn in Heidelh. Sitzungsher. (phil.-hist. Kl.), 1910, 1 ff. The church of S. Paolo Maggiore is built on the site of the temple, two columns of which are still visible.
29 Reproduced in CAH, vol. iv of plates, 156.
30 Ibid. 184.
31 See the fine puplication in Atti del III Congresso nazionale di Stuid Romanni, i, 1934, 82 ff.Google Scholar, pl. ix and Arch. Anzeiger, Beiblatt, 1935, 522, Abb. 1.
32 Delbrueck, Spätantike Kaiserporträts, pl. 94.
33 BMC Emp., iii, 477, 486; pl. 91, 7. Tellus stabilita, as Professor Alföldi points out to me, in opposition to the nutans mundus of Vergil, Eel., IV, 40. The coins carry a further allusion to the stabilization of agriculture under Hadrian (Toynbee, Hadrianic School, 142): on Providentia Augusti as protecting agriculture see Charles-worth, M. P. in Haivard Tbeol. Rev. xxix, 1936, 118Google Scholar and 122. The beautiful Hadrianic Tellus stabilita which was repeated under Commodus is based, I surmise, on a statuary composition of which we have the echo in a statue of the Villa Albani (Arndt-Bruckmann, Einzelaufnahmen, 4031) and in such derivatives as the two reclining ‘Seasons’ in the Museo Chiaramonti (Amelung, Vat. Cat., pl. 31, 6 and 32, 32, 13. The coin was copied for the image of ‘Cibele’ in the woodcut of Vincenzo Cartai, Imagini delli dei de gl'antichi (Venetia, Nicolò Pezzana, 1674), p. 288. I owe this interesting reference and the photograph of the woodcut (fig. 5) to the kindness of Miss Erna Mandowsky of the Warburg Library, London. Miss Mandowsky herself will have a great deal to say concerning Terra Mater in the Renaissance in her coming paper on Tintoretto's picture ‘The Origin of the Milky Way’ in the National Gallery, to be published in the Burlington Magazine.
34 For Terra Mater on coins see M. Bernhardt, Handbuch zur Münzkunde d. rom. Retches, 69. A number of coins with Terra Mater, culled mainly from P. L. Strack's Untersuchungen and Mattingly and Sydenham's Roman Imperial Coinage, I hope to deal with in a second article.
34a This interesting coin, which had escaped my attention, has been pointed out to me by Professor Alföldi who sends me a photograph of the specimen in Vienna. The one reproduced here by the kindness of Mr. Mattingly, is from the better preserved example in the British Museum (Mattingly and Sydenham iv, 1, 280, no. 418 = Cohen, 48). I have learned that a complete cast of Roman coins, according to subjects, is being compiled by Signorina Cesano for the Museo dell' Impero. The reverses referring to Roman legend, religion and ritual will form a contribution of unparalleled value for the study of Rome.
35 The relief and the replica in the Louvre are conveniently reproduced in Van Buren's, A. W. article in JRS iii, 1913Google Scholar, pl. 4 and 5. The central figure of both may be found in CAH, vol. iv of plates, 121, with bibliography on p. 120 (Strong).
36 Quarterly Review, 1906, 116.
37 Van Buren, loc. cit., 114 ff.
38 See supra, note 35.
39 In Mélanges d'arch. et d'hist., 1931, 64 f. and note 2. J. Gagé, ibid., 1932, 86, also accepts the Italia identification, but in Rev. Ét. latines, 1933, 14 f., he seems to favour Tellus.
40 Vol. x, 464.
41 In Hadrianic School and La patera d'argento di Parabiago respectively.
42 See my Scultura Romana, 21.
43 That the rabbit—a singularly prolific little animal–was originally one of the attributes of Tellus, seems probable. It appears as such in a seventeenth-century engraving of Terra (plate iv, 2, after Van Marle, Iconographie de l'art profane, fig. 340 on p. 308). Mr. A. M. Hind, Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, kindly sends the following note: ‘The engraving is one of a series of the four elements by Nicolas de Bruy n (? 1565–1652) after Marten de Vos, first published by Assuerus van Londerseel, presumably in Antwerp. The original of plate IV, 2 is a later, probably third, state. The first state with the initials of van Londerseel as publisher is without the names of Ottensorde Wet and without the word Terra in the central composition. Terra is engraved at the top in the margin and below there are four lines of Latin verse:
Quattuor in rebus liquet esse, Elementa, creatis Telluremq; et Aquus Ignemq; atque Aera quorum
Terra homini cunctisq; feris habitacula praebet Et gravitate sui ingentis pars intima Mundi est.
Wurzbach Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon s.v. “N. de Bruyn,” no. 100.’ The first state of the plate shows that the figure was from the first intended for Terra. It is more than probable, therefore, that the original from which it was taken was also a Terra and that the rabbit belonged to the habitaculum of the beasts, a point I hope to make clearer in a future paper. It is, of course, always on the cards that the Renaissance translated back, whether consciously or not, a provincial type into its original motive: this is clear in the case of Correggio's Terra at Parma which, as the elephant head-dress indicates, is taken from an Africa (also noted by J. M. C. Toynbee, Hadrianic School, pl. xxii, 3). While on the subject of the Renaissance I cannot resist pointing out that the figures of Pax with the blind infant Plutus, and Abundantia with the cornucopiae, originally made by Guglielmo della Porta for the tomb of Paul III, Farnese, and now in the Palazzo Farnese (E. Steinmann, Das Grabmal Pauls III, pls. 11 and 12), are simply taken, as Steinmann only partially recognized, from a Terra Mater motive, whose attributes are divided between the two figures.
44 BMC Rep. i, 415 f., pl. 43, 5.
45 BMC Emp., iii, 21: see, however, the note there and also p. xlix.
46 Bronzes antiques du Canton de Neufchâtel, 1928, 17 ff., as cited in CAH, vol. iv of plates, bibliography on p. 120.
47 The reverse of the Mithraic altar-piece from Dieburg (pl. xx) with the myth of Sol and Phaethon, and below Tellus, Oceanus and Caelus (Fr. Behn, Das Mithrasheiligtum zu Dieburg (R-G Forschungen, i), 1928, pl. 11) gives some notion of what these compositions were like which combined into one picture under mythological form the various elements and cognate figures (Dioscuri, etc.): cf. the large mosaics with Seasons and all the attributes of the Earth's fertility (e.g. Reinach, Rép. des peintures, 1922, 131 ff., 411), and medieval descriptions such as that given by Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans— ‘pictura in qua erat imago Terrae in modum Orbis comprehensa’ (Poetae aevi Caroling, i, 547 (xlvii) with Dümmler's note: cf. R. Hinks, Carolingian Art,152.)
48 His article, which appeared in Mélanges Maspero, ii, is only known to me at present from his own reference to it in Rev. Ét. latines, 1936, 24.
48a The influence of the ‘Terra Mater and children’ motive can be traced throughout, the Renaissance. The Ara Pacis slab was only discovered in 1568, but numbers of derivatives must have been known from coins, reliefs, etc., and imitated or adapted, in the Quattrocento and after. Whether the mother be sitting or standing, the relation to her of the two children is constant: the smaller child is held close to her, the other looks up to her or clambers at her side, e.g. Jacopo della Quercia's statues of Rhea Silvia and Acca Laurentia, from the Fonte Gaia at Siena (now on the loggia of the Palazzo del Comune); the ‘Caritas’ of Andrea del Sarto in the cloister of Lo Scalzo at Florence (probable Michelangelesque inspiration but grouping certainly imitated from the antique). In the seventeenth century the motive is repeated in the fine group of the seated ‘Caritas’ on the balustrade of the organ loft in the Church of the Maddalena in Rome.
49 Alföldi, in Hermes, lxv, 1930, 379Google Scholar: see also CAH, vol. iv of plates, bibliography on p. 124 b. The cornucopiae was evidently as common in the Roman Empire as the bundle of rods in Fascist Italy: see the numerous coins with cornucopiae in Anson's Numismata Graeca, iv, pl. 4 to 7 and pp. 27 to 42.
50 The cornucopiae of which fragments have been found is generally assigned to a young male figure (Bonus Eventus ?) thought to belong to the Rome slab.
51 As on the altar of the Gens Augusta from Carthage (Musée du Bardo, Tunis): see CAH, vol. iv of plates, 135, with bibliography.
52 See CAH, vol. iv of plates, 136 b.
53 Quoted by Monsignor Wilpert, Le Pitture delle Catacombe Romane, 15.
54 For the considerable amount of Terra Mater material which I have already collected in view of a corpus (to include coins, mosaics, pictures and silver-ware), only a very small part of which appears here, I have to thank the splendid photographic library of Sir R. Witt in London; Dr. F. Saxl, of the Warburg Institute in London; and the German Institute in Rome, where Dr. Siegfried Fuchs looked out Terra Mater representations for me from their rich collection of photographs. My thanks to Professor Alföldi and Dr. von Schönebeck are already on record. Finally, I owe to Professor L. Curtius the droll comparison with the Romney picture: I think i t is sound. I shall be deeply grateful if scholars and fellow-students will call my attention to Terra Mater types, especially in postclassical times, which might otherwise escape me. Professor C. Morey has already had the kindness to send me as many as fifty references to ‘Earth ’ or ‘Earth and Ocean,’ in medieval art, of which I hope to avail myself in a future paper.
55 Quoted by Dawson, Christopher, The Making of Europe, 203Google Scholar, from R. K. Gordon, Anglo-Saxon Poetry.