CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.

As C.C. Mattusch notes (p. 179 in Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples), herms served a variety of functions in antiquity. In the Greek world, herms (named for Hermes) were primarily apotropaic in nature, serving as protectors of travelers, cities and homes and were placed on street corners, doorways and other boundaries. In the Roman era – especially at sites like Pompeii – herms came to be adorned with portraits of poets, philosophers, statesman and other deities where they were used as decorative adjuncts in niches or mounted around pools and gardens. The present herm is surmounted by a head of Bacchus, depicted with an archaizing beard of voluted curls and a large vine wreath that frames his head. For a related example from a janiform herm, see no. 41 in C.C. Vermeule and M.B. Comstock, Sculpture in Stone and Bronze: Additions to the Collections of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art.
This herm once adorned the peristyle garden of Hammond Castle in Gloucester, MA. The brainchild of John Hays Hammond Jr. (1888-1965) – a renowned inventor known as “The Father of Radio Control” – the castle was built in the 1920s to house Hammond’s eclectic collection of Roman, Medieval and Renaissance art. Hammond Castle also featured one of the largest pipe organs in the world, consisting of 8,400 pipes and incorporating inventions patented by Hammond himself.