The sculptural decoration of the Hadrian´s villa on Tivoli

 

Extensive investigations on sculptural marbles indicated that a sudden change occurred at the beginning of the 2nd century AD, when Asia Minor marbles, mostly coming from the Aphrodisias urban quarries and from the recently discovered Göktepe site (some 30 km from Aphrodisias), almost completely replaced the Greek marbles from Paros and Mt. Penteli which were used until then for sculptural purposes. For further investigations of this dramatic change multi-method provenance studies, including petrographic, isotopic, electron paramagnetic resonance and trace chemical analyses, have been carried out on 20 white, 9 black and 1 red artifact at the Hadrian’s Villa.

From left to right the three heads in Göktepe marble identified at the Hadrian’s Villa: Hadrian (VA3), fragmentary head of Vibia Sabina (VA2), and Vibia Sabina (VA1).
From left to right the three heads in Göktepe marble identified at the Hadrian’s Villa: Hadrian (VA3), fragmentary head of Vibia Sabina (VA2), and Vibia Sabina (VA1).
From left to right the four sculptures in Docimium marble sampled at the Hadrian’s Villa: Ares (VA12), Hermes (VA15), Amazon from Phidias (VA14) and Amazon from Polyclitus (VA13).
From left to right the four sculptures in Docimium marble sampled at the Hadrian’s Villa: Ares (VA12), Hermes (VA15), Amazon from Phidias (VA14) and Amazon from Polyclitus (VA13).

6 out of 20 samples of white marbles are of Göktepe origin as well as 17 out of 19 black marble samples indicate the begin of the dramatic turning to the Göktepe marbles in sculpturing.

 

References:

Attanasio, D., Bruno, M., and Prochaska,W., 2013: The Asiatic marbles of the Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli. - Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013), 4358-4368.