At first it was thought that it was a representation of the goddess Ceres. Subsequently, it was cataloged as the ‘Pompelo Togado’, believing that it was a male. Now, a study in charge of the General Directorate of Culture-Prince of Viana reveals that it is actually a girl. More than a century after its appearance between the rubble on Navarrería Street in Pamplona and after being in an unknown whereabouts until 2015, the interpretation of a Roman statue in bronze of the 1st century DC has turned a while waiting for it to be analyzed in greater depth.
The togada sculpture was found in the course of some works on Navarrería Street in Pamplona in 1895 and the track was lost in 1906. There was only evidence of its existence for a black and white photograph made by the historian Julio Altadill published in 1911. It was not until 2015 when it was possible to locate. It was fortuitous. In that year, the director of the Museum of Alicante, Manuel Occina Doménech, went to a congress in Alen (Germany) to give a paper on Roman bronzes found in ancient Hispania. In his presentation he showed the image of Julio Altadill to refer to the “lost” togate of Pompelo. There was a chance that in the room, among the public, was historian Carol C. Mattusch, who years ago, in 1996 had seen her in an exhibition in the United States, which identified her.
After finding it, in 2023 the Government of Navarra acquired the piece for its owner for a price of 572,610.88 euros, although it had already returned to Pamplona a year earlier in the form of a loan. Since then, sculpture has been the subject of scientific studies, both technical and historical and artistic in order to know the piece in depth.
Thus, a few months later, in October 2024 the Museum of Navarra hosted the first session of the XI Roman sculpture meeting in Hispania, an specialized international meeting organized by the University of Navarra. There the ‘Pompelo Togado’ was presented to the highest specialists in Roman sculpture in Hispania with the aim that experts could contribute their knowledge about the piece. Among the participants were the German doctor Hans Ruprecht Goette, recognized as a world authority in statutory of classical antiquity, very particularly of the togados. It was he who informed the organizers of the meeting his conviction that the figure was actually the representation of a girl and recommended the opinion of the specialist Carmen Marks-Jacob, of the Humboldt University of Berlin, author in 2005 of an article that included a different interpretation of this piece following the photograph carried out by Altadill in 1911.
The Navarra Museum commissioned German experts a specialized study, which is still ongoing, but that is already available for a previous report. It reaffirms the idea that sculpture is really about a girl. Specifically, Carmen Marck-Jacob points out that she is a Roman citizen “between 10 and 12 years” dressed in pretexta toga. As he explains in conversation with eldiario.es/navarra, he has reached that conclusion from two indications. The first, his clothing: a long robe below the toga that reaches his feet. “The men never carried toga with long tunic, theirs was shorter,” he says. The second, the beam of spikes he carries in his right hand. “It would be a symbol for Ceres, the goddess of fertility, as an omen of the good fortune of that girl, which will one day get married and have children. Let’s say the complete life of a Roman citizen,” he adds. To this, the size of the piece, 127 centimeters, is added, according to that of a girl of that age at the time.
“The single and free-born Roman citizen girls wore the pretexta toga. It is very clear that here we have a Roman girl with the right of citizenship represented with the official attire,” the expert Carmen Marck-Jacob solemnizes. It would be thus the only bronze representation of a girl dressed in toga. “There are several girls made in bronze, but with None toga. This is the only one for the moment,”
An older century
The Roman statues expert indicates that the statue could have a funeral meaning or have been part of a family sculptural group. “I lean more for this second hypothesis. I think that the statue was originally erected in the city’s urban center as part of an honorary monument to his family and accompanied by the figures of his parents and brothers if he had them.” It supports it in the fact that the statue was found in the urban center of Pamplona along with other rubble, pieces of sculptures, a capital or a female bronze bust, among other remains.
“We know that the Flavio de Pompelo forum in the third century dismantled a fire and the inhabitants decided not to restore it. Thus, they were not going to use, also the statues, to a layer of rubble that has been found when excavating in the city. I think it belongs to that layer of rubble,” says Carmen Marck-Jacob.
In addition to the turnaround in the interpretation, there has also been a change in the dating of the sculpture. Initially, it had been dated in the second century DC, but the new analysis of the piece is placed by a century earlier, in the I DC, specifically between year 1 and 37 of this new dating responds to two arguments. The first, the type of toga that was initially represented in the sculpture. “In the 1911 photo it is seen that I had holes that were covered in a restoration. We know that the togas of that time had those holes.” The other, again the length of the robe, more typical of the 1st century
Waiting to know the definitive results of the report, the sculpture is located in the Navarra Museum already cataloged as a “togada girl” and not as a man, and can be visited since this week.
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