UC Berkeley

The ancient Greek sculpture now known as the “Pasquino Group” depicts an older helmeted Homeric warrior carrying the naked body of a younger, dead comrade. The original statue was likely created in the third or second century BCE, a time when dramatic agonistic images of mythical characters were intentionally employed across the Mediterranean to draw connections between the acts of powerful leaders and those of an earlier heroic age. It is not surprising that the motif would continue to be popular in Roman contexts, serving as a conversational catalyst in the capacity of emulation and allusion. This dissertation argues that the mutable compositional nature of the Pasquino Group made it fungible and subject to adaptation early in its reception history, allowing for its continued use over more than two millennia.

As an ancient statue type, the Pasquino Group is remarkable not for its preservation, but for the manner in which it was fragmented and reinterpreted, both in antiquity and from the Renaissance onwards. The original group shares the fate of most Greek bronze sculpture: it is entirely lost. Unlike other opera nobilia evidently popular in the Roman period, no extant complete full-scale copies survive. In order to recover the composition, art historians have instead relied on information gleaned from fragmentary Roman marble copies ranging in scale from miniature to colossal. As the introduction recounts, the first full-scale examination of the group occurred in the 1930s, when art historian Bernhard Schweitzer used ancient copies of the Pasquino and sculptural “variants,” to reconstruct the composition of the original. Using a detailed iconographic analysis, Schweitzer identified the two figures of the sculptural group as the Homeric heroes Menelaos and Patroklos. Citing similarities to the Pergamon altar (200-150 BCE), Schweitzer then associated the lost Hellenistic work with a known sculptor – Antigonos of Karystos. Schweitzer’s task was one of reconstruction, trying to spy the murky precedent through the confounding layers of Roman copying and the subsequent deterioration and destruction of those copies.

Since Schweitzer’s monograph, major archaeological finds have cast doubt on both the attribution of the sculptor and on the identities of the depicted figures. Of these discoveries, the most notable were three over-life-sized copies of the Pasquino Group found during excavations in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Variations in the composition and differences in display at these sites have highlighted a number of unanswered questions and weaknesses in Schweitzer’s hypotheses. Most notably, the identities of the two figures in the group do not always seem to align with Schweitzer’s identification. In light of the archaeological discoveries at Sperlonga, Aphrodisias, and Loukou, an identification with a different moment from the Epic Cycle, when Ajax lifted up the body of Achilles and carried it out of the fray, is now favored. Building upon previous study of the Pasquino Group, the Introduction and first chapter of this dissertation survey existing scholarship and examines the evidence for the murky origins of the now-lost original bronze in ancient Greece. This requires clarifying the Group’s relationship with similar agonistic pairings of combatants and helper groups, most notably the over-life-sized Hellenistic sculpture depicting Achilles and Penthesilea.

The second chapter examines eleven of the fourteen known full-sized marble Roman sculptural copies of the Pasquino Group to address the question of why the Hellenistic composition remained relevant over five centuries of Roman reception. It also evaluates the significance of the Roman display of these Greek sculptures, with a focus on context. Examples from early Imperial contexts illustrate how the type was adapted early on to showcase knowledge of the Greek heroic ideal and was associated with only the highest levels of elite patronage. Later copies of the Pasquino Group were understood not only as part of a culture of ancient reception, but also alluded to the personal biographies of their collectors.

The third and final chapter places the role of one copy of the Pasquino Group within the origins of the “speaking statue” tradition, starting with the late 15th century societal factors that led to its creation. The chapter argues that that the particular fragmentation of the Parione copy of the Pasquino Group was essential in its evolution into a locus for the posting of anonymous commentary from the point of view of the sculpture itself. Ephemeral acts of “restoration,” both sculptural and literary, continuously transformed the Pasquino Group. In turn, the “animated” monument distinctly shaped the movement and motivations of its interlocutors. The conclusion of this dissertation aims to contextualize the animation of the Pasquino Group and examine the influence of the statue to the present day.