An Ancient Statue of the Empress Helen Reidentified (?)

Abstract

During Rubens’ first visit to Rome in 1601–1602, he executed three paintings, now in the hospital at Grasse, for the chapel of Saint Helen in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.¹ The church embodies part of a Constantinian imperial palace, and the chapel dedicated to St. Helen, Con-stantine's mother, was supposed to have been installed in her own chamber. Two of Rubens’ paintings, the Raising of the Cross and the Crowning with Thorns, decorated the lateral walls of the chapel, while the third, which shows Helen holding the True Cross, hung over the altar. When the pictures were removed toward the middle of the eighteenth century, the altarpiece was replaced by an antique statue (Fig. 1) restored to represent St. Helen in a kind of composite imitation of Rubens’ figure (Fig. 3) and that by Andrea Bolgi in Saint Peter's (1629–1640; Fig. 4).² It is possible, however, that Rubens’ and Bolgi's figures may themselves have been related to the ancient one, to which, even discounting the restorations, they seem to bear more than a generic resemblance in pose and drapery arrangement.