Cosa: The Sculpture and Furnishings in Stone and Marble

Jacquelyn Collins-Clinton, Cosa: The Sculpture and Furnishings in Stone and Marble (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020). 9780472131594.

Reviewed by Becca Gaborek, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, rmgab@email.unc.edu.

Jacquelyn Collins-Clinton’s meticulously crafted catalogue is an invaluable complement to existing publications on Cosa. It represents decades worth of research on the topic of the Roman site’s sculpture and furnishings in stone and marble, which began as her 1970 doctoral dissertation directed by Otto J. Brendel¹ and continued in a series of subsequent articles.² Excavations at Cosa remain ongoing under the joint tutelage of Florida State University and Bryn Mawr College. Collins-Clinton’s volume incorporates archaeological data from 1948, when the excavations were established by the American Academy in Rome, through 2008, when a small group of sculptural marbles underwent petrographical analysis (to which Collins-Clinton herself contributed). This monograph is the most current compendium of published materials from Cosa to date and has a great deal to offer students of ancient sculpture, specialists and non-specialists alike.

Collins-Clinton divides her work into two parts. The first establishes the archaeological and historical contexts of the sculptural landscape of late Republican and early Imperial Cosa. These chapters provide an excellent synthesis of the materials later catalogued, placing them into conversation with one another and with the site more broadly. The result is that the reader gains a deep appreciation of the chronological and spatial distribution of the sculptures as well as how these distributions mirror the settlement’s changing fortunes over time. For their preponderance of archaeological finds of interest, the so-called “arx” (citadel), forum, and the House of Diana enjoy particular attention. These areas received much of their architectural and decorative embellishment in the form of stone and marble sculpture in the last two centuries BCE. Accordingly, this is the period during which, Collins-Clinton argues, Cosa reached a peak in its prosperity (p. 1).

It is in Part I that Collins-Clinton discloses the difficulty of her undertaking. Significant disturbance took place on the site during the Middle Ages, especially between the sixth century CE and 1329. Medieval efforts to establish agricultural settlements and military outposts within the Roman ruins served to remove most of the ancient materials from their original contexts at best, or, at worst, to destroy the works entirely. For instance, matching pieces of a single portrait statue that Collins-Clinton has identified as Drusus Minor were found throughout the forum, the forum reservoir, and on the arx (pp. 8, 44–45). There is evidence, moreover, that at least two lime kilns were in operation at this time (p. 9). Collins-Clinton’s ability not only to date and reconstruct these disparate fragments but also to convincingly argue for their original provenance is therefore quite commendable, a testament to her authority in the field of Graeco-Roman sculpture and on the Cosan urban environment.

In Part II, Collins-Clinton launches into her analytical catalogue of all known sculptures and furnishings in stone and marble from Cosa dating from the second century BCE to the second century CE. She organizes the materials broadly into “public” and “private.” Public statuary comprises the subcategories of portrait heads and portrait statues, while domestic sculpture encompasses statuettes, herms, miniature herm busts, oscilla (wind ornaments with the face of Bacchus), and pinakes (tablets). A third miscellaneous grouping transcends her public versus private division: tables, altars, basins and their supports, puteals (wellheads), sundials, and disembodied body parts. After introducing each section and subsection with an art historical investigation of the sculptural type and its relationship to its Cosan environs, Collins-Clinton arranges the pieces in roughly chronological order. The earliest fragment of datable furniture hails from the first half of the second century BCE, while the latest dates to the first half of the second century CE under Hadrian. Throughout the technical descriptions of manufacture that ensue, Collins-Clinton frequently references some three hundred high-quality black-and-white plans, photographs, and drawings compiled as plates at the end of the text. She helpfully features multiple views of the same piece, including close-ups of fractures and joins, in addition to the often ignored back of each sculpture.

A distinct strength of Collins-Clinton’s work is her masterful integration of comparanda from Delos and the sites affected by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE whenever possible in her analyses of these artifacts. For but one of many examples, she likens the three herms found in the garden of the House of Diana, an atrium-house facing the forum, to those discovered within the peristyles of the Pompeian Houses of the Vettii (VI.15.1), of the Golden Cupids (VI.16.7), and of Marcus Lucretius (IX.3.5) (pp. 104–5, 108, etc.). This methodological approach situates Cosa within a broader cultural milieu and enhances our understanding of the artistic and social exchanges that characterized the Roman world. By drawing parallels with architecture and artworks that loom large in the scholarly discourse, Collins-Clinton offers a richer, more nuanced view of Cosa’s place within the Roman Empire. It becomes clear that the city’s developments were both influenced by and reflective of wider trends in Roman society. The very nature of this catalogue will encourage scholars to employ Cosa’s sculptural remains as comparanda for other, less well-studied sites in the future.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Collins-Clinton’s research, however, is its ramifications for our conceptions of the social life of the city. The aforementioned petrographical investigation of a group of white marbles with suspected domestic provenances revealed that most of them had been sculpted out of Greek stone and subsequently imported to Cosa from foreign workshops (pp. 22–23). When considered alongside Cosa’s known ceramic export businesses (pp. 20–27), this discovery contributes significantly to a reevaluation of the town’s cultural vibrancy during the late Republican period onwards. The importation of valuable Greek marbles underscores Cosa’s prosperity and its active participation in Mediterranean-wide commercial networks. Such findings challenge previous assumptions about Cosa’s wealth and cultural connections, in addition to attesting to the town’s sophistication and its elite residents’ appreciation for Greek artistry.

Indeed, the only critique that might be leveled against Collins-Clinton’s catalogue is her interpretation of the major temple on the arx and an over-life-sized, Augustan-era torso that had been built into a medieval fortification (pp. 51–54). Although she acknowledges that recent scholarship has thrown the longstanding belief that the temple was dedicated to the Capitoline Triad into serious doubt (p. 3), and although she places the term “Capitolium” within quotation marks to indicate uncertainty, she maintains the same traditionalist lens by dubbing the torso “Jupiter Capitolinus” and reconstructing it as the primary cult statue in the central cella of the “Capitolium.” The assumption that a headless torso, even of significant size and artistic quality—and regardless of its iconographic parallels to a Pompeian Jupiter Optimus Maximus—represents Jupiter Capitolinus could be seen as an extrapolation that requires more substantial evidentiary support. I believe that this issue warrants further discussion.
Altogether, Cosa: The Sculpture and Furnishings in Stone and Marble is praiseworthy for its thoroughness and depth. It stands as a significant scholarly achievement, offering comprehensive insight into the site’s sculptures and furnishings in a particular medium. Collins-Clinton’s scrupulous research and methodological approach illuminate Cosa’s cultural and economic status within the Roman Empire, while also inviting further discussion on archaeological interpretations. This work certainly sets a precedent for future research.

Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction
1. Archaeological Context (1–14)
2. The Historical Context (15–44)
Part II: Catalogue
3. Public Statuary (45–80)
4. Domestic Sculpture (81–134)
5. Tables (135–72)
6. Altars (173–90)
7. Basins and Their Supports (191–204)
8. Puteals (Wellheads) (205–20)
9. Sundials (221–24)
10. Body Parts (225–46)

Notes

1. Jacquelyn Collins-Clinton, “The Marble Sculptures from Cosa” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1970).
2. Jacquelyn Collins-Clinton, Rosaria Platania, and Donato Attanasio, “Sculptural Marbles from Cosa (Tuscany, Italy) and Their Provenance by EPR and Petrography,” Marmora 4 (2008): 19–56.