Una statua di Artemide a Montebelluna

In 2009 a marble statue of Artemis/Diana was unearthed near Montebelluna (Treviso) in a field where scattered rests of a Roman villa has been found. The statue is 1.30 m. high; the head and the left arm are worked in separate pieces, and the marble is probably of Greek origin, coming from the island of Paros. The goddess is represented standing, holding a spear with the left hand, and an animal skin with the right hand. The type is very close to an Artemis represented in two candelabra bases in Rome, dated in the last decades of the Republican period. In spite of the poor state of conservation, the rendering of the drapery shows uncommon workmanship: the statue is probably a work of a Greek sculptor, and can be dated according to the coiffure and the style in early Augustan age. The archaeological context is poorly documented: perhaps the sculpture was displayed in the garden of a villa rustica, as demonstrates by similar examples in Pompeji and elsewhere