Budapest Régiségei 17. (1956)

ANYAGKÖZLÉSEK - B. Thomas Edit: III. századi női fej Albertfalváról 169-175

ËÏ)ÏT B. THOMAS SCULPTURED FEMALE HEAD FROM THE 3RD CENTURY AT ALBERTFALVA Prior to World War II, an antique piece of sculpture was found while digging a well on a ground that belongs to the house at No. 2, Fegyvernek-street, in Albertfalva (Budapest XI). It is carved from sandstone and represents a female portrait which, as far as can be judged from its measurements, may have formed part of a 3/4 life size statue. Questioned, the former proprietor of the plot told that also pieces of mortar-coated stones had come to the surface together with the relic. Its material is a strongly friable, porosé sandstone ; its height, including the neck, is 22 cm ; the height of the face is 17 cm. Viewed laterally, the backwards elongated form of the head is rather conspicuous ; its width is 21,5 cm. A thin layer of stucco is observable on the surfaces less exposed to wear : it may have served as the grounding of colour on the statue which, originally, was a painted one. It can be seen that when shaping the pupils and the corners of the eyes, the artist used a very sharp pointed scraper. We think we are justified in assuming that the head belonged to a sepulchral effigy. The statue was not meant to be viewed from one side only, since also the back of the head is sculptured, so that it surely did not stand either in a «aedicula» or in a walled niche. The head is different from the provincial Roman relics. Not many analogous pieces have been found either in the Pannonian material or in that of the adjacent provinces, while similar pieces from other provinces hailed from areas in which the survival of artistic elements evolved by indigenous population has to be taken into account. The individualized features of the head in question make it almost portrait-like, and — as such — it shows a close affinity with the two child-heads in the Landesmuseum at Trier. These heads, those of a boy and a young girl, respectively, were found in the vicinity of the temple of Mars Lenus. Our head, found in Albertfalva, is an addition to the works of the group of sculptors defined by Koethe and later by Bovini. The roots of this work of art, too, have to be traced in the artistic traditions of the local original inhabitants. It is common knowledge that in Welschbillig, and especially in Trier, the culture of the original Celtic inhabitants predominated to such an extent that it fertilized and impressed even Roman art. If we inspect the finds unearthed in the original residential quarters of Albertfalva, we cannot escape noticing in the material from the first and second, and even the third centuries the predominancy of a peculiarly local character which seems to have put its stamp upon every manifestation of the entire life and culture of this settlement, including, of course, works of art. The reason why it was possible for the civilian settlement of Albertfalva to retain its ancient features through so many centuries is that, to our knowledge, it was never used for military purposes and never served as a ground of military operations. When investigating the origin of our relic it is not necessary to suppose that a Rhenish settlement was established at Albertfalva between the thirties and seventies of the third century, i. e. the period in which the statue was assumedly created. Nothing in the material excavated in Albertfalva points to a Rhenish settlement having been established during the reign of Gallienus (communication of T. Nagy). In ultima analysi, here in Albertfalva, on the bank of the Danube, art was influenced by the very same factors as were at play in Trier, in the environment of the Rhine, viz

. : the original population, a native Celtic fundamental layer, and the conquering Romans. Seeing the striking similarity in style and artistic conception between the child-heads in Trier and the female head from Albertfalva it is impossible not to think that there must have existed some closer relationship between the two places than that warranted by the ethnological identity of the natives and the conquering occupants. We have, for the time being, no information about such relationship, nor are future explorations in Albertfalva likely to further enlighten us in this respect : it is from other sources that the solution of this problem must come. That there existed earlier, before the wars of Marcus, a competent stone dresser's and sculptor's workshop, the guardian of sound traditions, in the near County of Fejér, is quite obvious from the almost life-sized statues of female models in native wear that are now in the custody of the King Stephen Museum at Székesfehérvár. The fact that statues of outstandig artistic quality were made during the second century in the County of Fejér, comparatively near to Albertfalva, proves that 174