Description
The Roman city of Veleia, located in the first Piacenza Apennines, came to light again in 1760, when Duke Don Filippo I of Bourbon began official excavations; in September of the same year he established the Museum of Antiquities to house the finds.
Among the first findings were the twelve statues in Lunense marble depicting the members of the imperial Julio-Claudian family; aligned on a podium along a wall of the basilica, they were intended to underline the political loyalty of the small community towards the court. The relationship between the latter and the town was further strengthened by L. Calpurnio Piso who, brother-in-law of Julius Caesar, was the patron saint of Veleia.
The statues were made in several periods: during the reign of Tiberius, the first group consists of the image of the emperor, the portraits of Augustus and his wife Livia, mother of Tiberius, those of the two Drusi, Major and Minor, respectively brother and son of the emperor, as well as that of Lucius Calpurnius Piso the Pontiff, probable promoter of the initiative. A second group includes the statue of Caligula, whose head was replaced with that of Claudius after his death and the damnatio memoriae, and those of his sister Drusilla and their mother Agrippina the Major. A third group includes the portrait of Claudius placed on the statue of Caligula, that of Claudius’ last wife, Agrippina the Minor, as well as the image of her still-child son, Nero.
A final intervention concerns the statue of a loricato whose identification is still controversial: scholars are divided between Germanicus, and in this case the statue would belong to the first phase of the cycle, and Domitian; the head, however, appears to have been reworked again, perhaps to represent Nerva.
Bibliography
Veleia a Parma. Breve guida alla sezione, edited by Roberta Conversi, Parma, Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta, 2016
Artworks and Collections
