Although much of the face is long gone, there’s something fixating (and strikingly symmetrical) about this most troubled brow…appropriate for the Hellenistic age, when any dynast worth his salt had a serious target on his back and a lot in his mind.
He’s a big boy – well larger than life-sized at over 20 centimeters across at the widest – and leaves quite an impression viewed head-on or from the side, where the extreme tension and furrowing is at full effect. Strikingly crisp locks of hair are brushed up from the brow in the center – reminiscent and probably intentionally so of Alexander’s elevated cowlick (anastole), and a shallow band that encircles the coiffure clearly once accommodated a royal diadem, perhaps in gilt bronze.
Remnants of tubular elements (the one at front and center most visible in these views) have prompted hypothesizing about what might have attached there – Hermes’ wings are one leading suggestion (hard to picture, if I’m honest). If this were true, identification as the mid-3rd century B.C. dynast Antiochos II who ruled much of what was then called Syria is a strong possibility.
I have a special fondness for really excellent monumental bronzes (who doesn’t!), but I wonder how much of this fragmentary head’s aesthetic draw is down to material? It’s hard to imagine even the finest marble capturing the sharply defined locks and sensitively modeled surface quite so well…
