Mercury; Rome, 2nd century A.D. Bronze.

Mercury; Rome, 2nd century A.D.Bronze.Provenance: Private Collection, Spain.Measures: 13.5 x 6.5 x 3 cm; 19 cm (base).Roman bronze statuette, molded in round bulk, representing the god Mercury naked, except for the cape hanging from his right shoulder. The figure has been made wearing the helmet with wings that is its main iconographic attribute within the Roman plastic. God of commerce and messenger of the gods, as well as protector of travelers, shepherds and orators, Mercury was also a psychopomp god, in charge of leading the souls of the dead to hell. In its origin it seems to have been related to the Etruscan deity Turms, also psychopomp and messenger of the gods, although most of its characteristics come from the analogous Greek god Hermes. It was not one of the primitive gods of Rome, but has its origin in the time of the republic, at the time of syncretism with the Greek religion. However, although he did not have a flamen or priest assigned to him, an important feast was celebrated in his honor, the Mercuralia (May 15).After the idealization of the Augustan era, the realism of the Flavian era and the later baroque style of the second and third centuries, Roman sculpture, marked by the presence of Christianity, tended to dehumanize, to become more ideal and symbolic. The concern for realism was lost, and there was a tendency towards a schematization that sought to capture the ideal, the soul or the divinity, and not the human aspect of the figures. The carving, in correspondence with this new aesthetic, acquires a great hardness, and the figures acquire a noble hieratism.