Female head

In 1874, this singular artifact is mentioned in the inventory of the Kircherian Museum, from which it passed to the Museo di Castel Sant'Angelo and then, in 1936, to the Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, where it was initially considered a late antique bronze. It has been hypothesized that it was originally part of the collection of Alfonso Donnini—an antiquities enthusiast originally from Tuscania—donated in 1652 to the Collegio Romano, which constituted one of the founding nuclei of the collection set up by the German Jesuit, the first catalogs for which, however, generically list a series of pyrite pieces (Robino Rizzet 2001). The small sculpture depicts a female head wearing a veil that barely allows a few locks of her hair to be glimpsed and is made of a particularly hard mineral with metallic highlights, considered to be pyrite by almost all scholars with the exception of Cellini (1956) who identifies it as galena, or lead glance. The state of conservation is good. Some of the missing pieces, such as on the right cheek, and generally scratches on the polished parts, seem attributable to material imperfections and sculpting problems rather than mechanical damage. It is rather more difficult to assess the irregular surface at the top of the head—which is less finished on the back—and at the neck attachment. The latter in particular would seem to bear traces of fracture trauma that could, however, date back to when the ore was extracted. The highly uncharacteristic nature of the artifact, moreover, makes it impossible to say whether the head was made as an isolated element or was part of a larger whole, such as the lapis lazuli female head inserted in the eleventh century in the Erimanno cross (Cologne, Erzbischöflisches Diözesanmus). Certainly, the small diameter of the neck and the weight of the piece rule out the possibility that it was part of a larger element worked in the form of a bust or full figure, which, what’s more, is virtually impossible to obtain from a single block of pyrite. Any connection of the head and body must therefore be through the insertion of a pin. It would, however, be extremely peculiar, despite the rarity of the material, to assume that in the mid-thirteenth century the piece could have been conceived as an isolated head, which would almost seem to be more in keeping with the collection tastes associated with the Wunderkammer.
The attribution to Nicola Pisano, which has also been reaffirmed recently (Di Fabio 2016), is based on the observation of executive and formal affinities with the figures sculpted by the artist around the middle of the thirteenth century for the corbels supporting the dome of the cathedral of Siena and with the female faces on the pulpit of the Pisa baptistery undertaken a few years later. The similarities are striking, and inlcude the cut of the eyes, the half-open mouth, the prismatic shape of the nose, and the slightly flattened oval of the face. The similarities also extend to specific modes of execution, such as the peculiar use of the drill to add chiaroscuro to the locks of hair and define certain somatic features. A possible explanation for the choice of this unusual material is that the work dates from the early part of Nicholas's artistic career, when he is believed to have made the animal protomes—whose chronology is disputed—that decorate the Fonte dei Canali in Piombino and date from 1247 (Testi Cristiani, 1990).
During this sojourn, the sculptor may have procured the mineral, extracted from deposits on the island of Elba, and been struck by the expressive and chromatic potential of a material endowed with a surface traversed by reflections reminiscent of bronze patinas, producing a work that seems to have its roots in the taste for working with rare and precious materials and the imitation of antiquity that characterized the workshops of southern Italy in the Norman and Swabian periods.
Among the stimuli that may have affected the sculptor from the repertoire of ancient sculpture, I would point to a gilded stucco head of Mithras from the Museo Nazionale in Rome (second–third century), which, like the sculpture in Palazzo Venezia, has a full oval face, puffy cheeks, and parted lips.

Gaetano Curzi

Entry published on 12 February 2025

Good, despite some mechanical damage.

From the Kircherian Museum, which perhaps acquired the piece from the collection of Alfredo Donnini;
Rome, Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo, 1936.

Bari, Castello Svevo, Federico II. Immagine e potere, February 4–April 17, 1995, no. 5.15;
Rome, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, Athanasius Kircher. Il museo del mondo, February 28–April 22, 2001, no. I.4;
Rimini, Castel Sismondo, Exempla. La rinascita dell’Antico nell’arte italiana, April 20–September 7, 2008, no. 59;
Rome, Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, Giotto e il Trecento, March 6–June 29, 2009.

Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Santangelo Antonino (a cura di), Roma 1954;
Cellini Pico, Ricordi normanni e federiciani a Roma, in «Paragone», 7.1956, 81, 1956, pp. 3-12;
Testi Cristiani Maria Laura, Nicola Pisano "sculpens in pietra ligno auro". La "testa di giovane donna" in pirite elbana, in  «Critica d'arte», 1990, 1, pp. 50-57;
Robino Rizzet Andrea, scheda n. I.4, in Lo Sardo Eugenio (a cura di), Athanasius Kircher. Il Museo del Mondo, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, 28 febbraio-22 aprile 2001), Roma 2001, pp. 53-55;
Curzi,  in Tomei Alessandro (a cura di), Giotto e il Trecento, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Museo del Risorgimento 6 marzo-29 giugno 2009), Milano 2009, p. 255, n.  98;
Di Fabio Clario, Spregiudicata misura: tecnica, stile e forma in una scultura inedita di Nicola Pisano, in «Bollettino d'Arte», 101, 2016, 29, pp. 41-60.