Bust of Homer
Unknown possibly Italian, Italian
18th century
Marble
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
S.X.2001.41
Geography
Place Made: Italy, Europe
Period
1600-1800
Object Name
Sculpture
Research Area
Sculpture
On view
Label
Like many other young 18th-century noblemen, Robert Clements found himself in the Roman studio of Pompeo Batoni to commission a portrait marking his participation in the Grand Tour. The Grand Tour was both educational and a coming-of-age ritual for upper-class Europeans and, later, Americans, in many ways like study-abroad trips for Dartmouth students today.
Part of Batoni’s appeal as a painter of Grand Tour portraits was the artist’s ability to customize them for individuals within an established formula. Robert Clements, for instance, decided to include a 2nd-century bust of the poet Homer that was part of the Farnese collection of Greco-Roman antiquities in Rome. Clements described the bust in his journal as a “famous bust . . . Antich [sic] & extremely fine.” The original bust inspired many plaster casts and copies, including this 18th-century version. Reading Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey was likely part of Clements’s education, and the inclusion of the bust visually reiterates both his training and his travels.
From the 2025 exhibition From Mastodon to Mosaic: Building an Academic Art Collection in America, curated by Ashley B. Offill, Curator of Collections
Course History
History 10.02, Archival Research, Julia Rabig, Summer 2025
Exhibition History
From Mastadon to Mosaic: Building an Academic Art Collection in America, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 14, 2025 - Fall 2026
Published References
H. Stuart Jones, A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures Preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome, The Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino, Oxford, at the Claredon Press, 1912, p. 235, no. 44, pl. 54.
Provenance
Found in the collection; catalogued, 2001.
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