Victory of Calvatone

The Calvatone Victoria is a gilt bronze statue from the Roman Imperial period. It belongs to the inventory of the Antikensammlung Berlin, but is now held in Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The piece is a 1.70 metre high statue of a winged woman cast from bronze. This is the traditional iconography of the Roman victory goddess, Victoria. She stands atop a globe and is depicted in the style of a Hellenistic maenad performing a movement somewhere between dancing and floating. She wears a chiton and has comparatively long legs, with the left leg forward, coming out of her dress. A panther skin is tied over her left shoulder and is fastened in place with a girdle at hip-height. The right arm of the figure extends forwards and may originally have held a wreath, while the left arm holds a palm frond (incorporating modern restorations). The head of the statue is based on 5th-century BC Classical Greek models and looks slightly to the right. The hair is held in place with a cord which wraps around the head twice and is tied in place above the forehead and at the back. On the globe is an inscription in roughly 5.5 cm high letters, reading Victoriae Aug (ustorum) / Antonini et Veri / M (arcus) Satrius Maior, "To the Victory of Emperors Antoninus and Verus, Marcus Satrius Maior (dedicated this)." The inscription indicates that the dedicator was the otherwise unknown Marcus Satrius Maior, whose Nomen is well-attested in ancient Northern Italy. The inscription also indicates that the art work was dedicated during the joint-reign of the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, i.e. 161 to 169 AD. It symbolised the victoriousness and claim to power of these emperors and probably commemorates the successful conclusion to the Parthian War of Lucius Verus (161-166 AD). This could explain why Victoria is depicted, unusually, as a kind of maenad, one of the female companions of the god Dionysus. Lucius Verus was celebrated after the conclusion of the campaign as a "new Dionysos," comparing his expedition to the mythic expedition of Dionysus to the east. The panther skin worn by the Victoria probably also refers to the Orient. New investigations of the artwork between 2016 an

Data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).