Hope Hygieia Statue: Medium, Myth, and Roman Culture

Introduction: Describing the Hope Hygieia

According to the website of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Hope Hygieia is a marble, life-sized statue of the ancient goddess of health that was originally discovered in the ancient Roman port of Ostia in 1797. It was originally owned by the British collector Sir Thomas Hope before being sold to William Randolph Hearst, who donated it to the city of Los Angeles in 1950. Over the years, the statue has been restored, then de-restored to the condition in which it was originally found, and finally re-restored at the Getty Museum in 2006.

This is a white marble statue with the clothing and hairstyle of a young Roman woman from an aristocratic background. The snake wrapped around her upper body is a standard feature in Hygieia statues and symbolizes medicine and healing. Her expression is serene, gentle, graceful, and virginal — precisely the manner in which she was typically portrayed in ancient sculpture.

Marble as an Artistic Medium

According to Joey Lewitin's Marble Information, marble is one of the most elegant and sophisticated stones — almost always smoothed and polished. It was commonly used in construction and sculpture in ancient Greek and Roman times and is still used for pillars, floors, and countertops today. Marble is a type of limestone that has been formed under high temperatures and pressures into calcite and dolomite, and therefore polishes very well. Because of numerous impurities such as iron and carbon, it can come in many different colors, which makes each piece unique.

According to the Wikipedia article on Marble Sculpture, the advantages of working in marble include its soft, translucent quality and the fact that it is relatively easy to work with and polish when it is first quarried. Among the disadvantages are its tendency to stain when touched and to deteriorate in outdoor environments, especially when exposed to smog and acid rain in modern cities. Granite is stronger and more durable than marble but also harder to work with, and marble is weaker than iron or bronze.

The Sculptor's Process

According to Wikipedia's article on Stone Carving, the standard technique from ancient Greek and Roman times was the hammer and chisel. The sculptor would first make a basic drawing or design of the artwork to be carved, and then find a piece of marble similar in shape to the intended form in order to minimize the amount of carving required. Most of the stone was then removed with a chisel — at least throughout most of history before power tools existed — followed by use of a point chisel, causing the sculpture to gradually take shape.

A claw chisel would then refine the shape and remove the marks left by the point chisel. Increasingly fine work was accomplished using toothed chisels, claws, and flat chisels to eliminate the lines left by previous tools, though this had to be done carefully so as not to remove too much additional stone. Rasps and rifflers removed even the finest chisel marks, working only in a forward direction in a seesaw motion. Files then removed all rasp and riffler marks, although any remaining white marks had to be addressed by deeper chiseling, followed by sanding with increasingly finer grades of paper. Some sculptors use only wet sandpaper for the finest smoothing. Finally, the sculpture is polished and waxed, and sometimes warmed in an oven. Before the invention of power tools, all of these steps had to be completed entirely by hand.

Dr. Alena Trckova-Flamee's article in the Encyclopedia Mythica describes Hygieia as one of the daughters of Asklepios (Asclepius) and a granddaughter of Apollo. She was also called Salus by the Romans and played an important role in religious cults in Greece and later in Rome, dating back to the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Her name survives in the modern word "hygiene," and her sacred snake, together with the rod of Asklepios, remains the symbol of medicine to this day.