Notes

Agrippina, “the truest woman that ever wed”’

GORDON POOLE Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples

t was partly geographical coincidence, my living on the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy, that brought me to Herman Melville’s long poem, Naples in I the Time of Bornba. When I published my edition of that work, together

with the linked poems At the Hostelry and “Pausilippo,” in 1989,z I wondered about the sources of the pictures and statues Melville described. Hostelry, a symposium of long-deceased artists, is particularly replete with references to works of art, real or imagined.

Real or imagined: this was one of the problems.3 There is no doubt that when Spagnoletto cites his “Flaying of St. Bartholomew” or his “Lawrence on the gridiron lean,” or Giotto his “Damned in Hell,” we are meant to think of works of art actually executed by those artists, as I have said in my commen- tary to the text, making the identifications. Often they are works Melville had seen in museums during his journey through the Middle East and Europe between October 1856 and May 1857, as Howard Horsford has noted in his scrupulously annotated edition of Melville’s journal. But then we find a pas- sage like the following:

“Nay, nay: but see, on ample round Of marble table silver-bound Prince Comus, in mosaic, crowned; Vivl dbro there in crystal flutes - Shapely as those, good host of mine, You summoned ere our Sillery fine We popped to Bacchus in salutes; -

’ My son, Federico Poole, has helped me generously with the art history aspects of this article. 1 also thank the Iibrari- ans and archivists of the National Museum of Naples for their courteous and eiiicient assistance, especially Dr. Maria Rosaria Bornrllo.

“At the Hostelry” and “Naples in the Time of Bomba,” ed. Gordon Poolc (Naples. lstituto Universitario Orientale, 1989). Further quotations from Hostelry or Bomba are referred to this edition.

Studies of the influence of painting and sculpture on Melville’s writings include. Ekaterini Georgoudaki, Melvilleb Artistic Use of his Journeys to Europe and the Near East, Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University, 1980, and “Ancient Greek and Roman Pieces of Art in Herman Melville’s Iconography,” ANATYHO AIIO THN EIIICTHMONIKH EnETHPIAA TEZ @IAOZO@IKHI MOAEE TOY APIZTOTEAEIOY HANEnIZTEMIOY @EZZAAONIKHZ TOMOC KA (Thessalonike, 19831, 85-95; Robert K. Wallace, Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1992) and “Melville’s Prints: The E. Barton Chapin, Jr., Family Collection,” Leviathan 2.1 (March 2000). 5-65, Douglas Robillard, Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997). Among these, only Wallace (1992) mentions Agrippina. with a reference to and reproductton of Turner’s “Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus.” Howard C. Horsiords edition of Melville’s journal ofa Visit to Europe and the Levant (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955) is a valuable repertor), for references 10 works of art seen by Melville, hereafter cited asJoumal.

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Well, cavaliers in manhood’s flower Fanning the flight 0’ the fleeing hour; Dames, too, like sportful dolphins free: - Silks iridescent, wit and glee. Midmost, a Maltese knight of honor Toasting and clasping his Bella Donna; One arm round waist with pressure soft, Returned in throbbed transporting rhyme; A hand with minaret-glass aloft, Pinnacle of the jovial prime! What think? I daub, but daub it true; And yet some dashes there may do.”

(Hostelvy, 11. 408-426)

We know from thejournal (221) that similar tables were seen by Melville at the Pitti Palace in Florence, but I was unable to find any in that museum corresponding to what is described here. One assumes that the poet needed to get a convivial scene with Comus, the late-Roman god of revelry, into his poem and invented the tableau. In fact, Veronese, who is the painter speaking these lines, is imagining - daubing, as he says - this work of art on the spot for the benefit of his fellow artists.

In the case of Agrippina, however, the reference to the Bourbon Museum (now the National Museum) in Naples is specific:

In hall Of Naples here, withal I stood Before the pale mute-speaking stone Of seated Agrippina - she The truest woman that ever wed In tragic widowhood transfixed; In cruel craft exiled from Rome To gaze on Naples’ sunny bay, More sharp to feel her sunless doom. 0 ageing face, 0 youthful form, 0 listless hand in idle lap, And, ah, what thoughts of God and man!

(Bomba, 11. 394-405)

Published here with the kind permission of the Soprintendenza Avcheologica delle Province di Napoli e Caserta are archival photographs of the so-called “Agvippina seduta” (inventory number 6029). It is part of the Farnese collection, which, we gather from the Journal (184), Melville saw towards the end of his visit to the museum on Saturday, February 21, 1857. He explicitly

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Figure 1. Agrippina. Courtesy of Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 6029

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mentions only the colossal statue of Hercules, as well as the “group of the bull” and tombstones, but the statue of Agrippina may have been one of the last he looked at before having to quit the museum “ere through with it.” He count- ed on getting back on the following Monday to see what he had missed, hav- ing failed to note that the museums closed on Mondays. However, it is clear that, however brief his visit may have been, the Agrippina statue made a deep impression on him.

It seems not to have been on display when I was working on my edition of Hostelry and Bornba, but now it is in full view in the corridor containing the Farnese statuary Furthermore, a life-sized plaster model, somewhat larger than the original, sits at the entrance to the near-by didactic section of the museum. Another American author, Anne Hampton Brewster, was also much struck by the Agrippina, which she saw during her visit a year later in 1858.4One hopes the photos may give the reader some idea of what made this work impressive.

The incongruity of the “ageing face” with the “youthful form,” that Melville noted, was a typical trait of many statues representing important peo- ple in imperial Rome, for often the heads, modeled with realistic likeness, would be mounted on bodies representing gods or goddesses. The Agrippina figure is based on a type used by Roman sculptors. It reproduces the image of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, as sculpted in Athens in the second half of the fifth century BC by an artist of the school of Phidias (circa 500-432 BC). The original, which National Museum authorities think may have been vener- ated as a cult statue in a sanctuary devoted to Aphrodite and Eros on the slopes of the Acropolis, would be copied by the Roman craftsmen and completed with an ideal head. Numerous copies of the resulting type are extant, mostly dating back to late Roman antiquity.5

In the case of the statue in the Naples museum traditionally identified as Agrippina, the head is instead a portrait datable to the time of Nero or the early Flavian age. According to the Naples museum authorities, the position of the loosely clasped hands, which struck Melville as “listless [. . .] in idle lap,” is, however, a variation on the original type. The features and the hair style are typical of representations of both Agrippina the Elder (Agrippina major) and her daughter, Agrippina the Younger (minor), Nero’s mother. The image of the former is well known, having appeared on many ancient Roman coins. Thanks in part to having been identified with Agrippina the Elder, the statue enjoyed

Nathalia Wnght, American Novelists in Italy. The Discoverers: Allston toJames (Philadelphia- University of Pennsylvania

The information in this and the next paragraph is drawn on the caption to the statue, prepared by the National Museum scholars. On the “Agrippina seduta” (or “matrona sedens”) see also Stefan0 De Caro, ed., If Museo Archeologico di Napoli (Naples Electa, 1994), p. 321; The Archaeological Museum of Naples, trans. Mark Weir and Federico Poole (Naples Electa, 19961, p 321.

Press, 1965), 113.

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Figure 2. Agrippina. Courtesy of Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 6029

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a growing aesthetic appreciation, which led to an analogous re-evaluation of a similar one in the hluseo Cupitolino in Rome, that Melville himself may well have seen. Although the head of the latter would seem to have been a portrait of Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine, it came to be called Agrippina on the model of the Farnese statue in Naples.

At the risk of dwelling at too great length on matters of art history, it may be interesting to mention that the two statues were much admired in the Neo- Classical period. The Farnese statue, preferred by Winckelmann,6 was repro- duced in bronze, terracotta, and bisque (an unglazed porcelain), inspiring artists of the period. Among these were Antonio Canova (1757-1822), who modeled his famous marble portrait of Maria Letizia Bonaparte on the Agrippina; and so it is that the body of the goddess Aphrodite once again bore the likeness of the mother of an ernperor.7

Before closing, let me say a word about the historical Agrippina (14 BC - AD 33). Granddaughter of Emperor Augustus, she bore her husband, Germanicus, nine children, among them Caligula and Agrippina the Younger. When her husband was poisoned in AD 19, Emperor Tiberius was suspected of having commissioned the assassination. Understandably, the relationship between Agrippina and him deteriorated. In AD 29 he had her cruelly exiled to the isle of Pandataria (now Ventotene), where she literally starved to death. Stanton Garner points out that Ventotene was too far away for her to actually “gaze on Naples’ sunny bay,” as Melville has it.* In qualifying her as the “truest woman that ever wed,” the poet was relaying an historical commonplace; Agrippina was celebrated for her steadfast character and morality, especially her devotion to her husbands memory. Her dying reflections on “God and man” may well have been as bleak as Melville suggests.

6JohannJoachim Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Alrertums (1764). 1 consulted it in the 1832 Italian translation: G. G Winckelmann, Opere, (Prato- Fr. Giacheui, MDCCCXXXII), toino 111, libro XI, capitol0 111, 93, p. 739 and notes 13 and 14.

Drawn on the caption at the National Museum, Naples

* “Naples and HMS Bclhpotent: Melville on the Police State,’’ Lrviathan 1. 2 (October 19991, 56