Inlaid glass eyes, when they survive, have a way of enlivening ancient sculpture – set into a portrait, these ones have weathered in such a way to give this man a peculiarly jaundiced aspect. Patently unfair and if you can look past the artificial intimations of cirrhosis, the portrait itself is a marvelous survival, and
Nero’s portraits are awfully fun if you (like me) allow yourself to indulge in his (maybe mostly apocryphal) biography and bask in all the really nasty things that were written about him… Much of what we think we know about the emperor comes from takedowns written by viper-tongued detractors (Suetonius I’m looking at you). Nero
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
A lot is written about the interplay between Hellenistic ruler portraits (with their over the top heroic dynamism and supple youth) and those of hollow-cheeked Roman aristocrats during the second and first centuries B.C. It’s a fun thing to think about…how to select a mode of self-representation and how to make it resonate within a
I’ve long admired this statue – a feat of large scale lost-wax casting giving a sense of the scale possible (infinite!), but also the surface subtleties achievable. Now headless, this standing gentleman has the distinct comportment and garments of an orator or magistrate – a statue mode used in the post-Classical period for honorifics set
This portrait at Boston’s MFA is one of the finest and most challenging I’ve come across, and I somewhat doubt that a pithy caption will do it justice… It is a most handsome face, with high cheekbones cheekbones, squared jaw, and pouty chin. The full lips are very slightly parted as if in mid-exhale, and
This portrait has all the best things: basanite (the hard dark stone is perhaps my favorite), a dab hand at defacement (of the zealous Late Antique kind), and the (fabricated?) features of the Gens Julii shining through the shined up face of its adoptive son Germanicus. Promising young Germanicus might have been Augustus’ top pick
Unusual in many respects, this bronze bust represents Ptolemy of Mauretania, last of his name and the very last Hellenistic ruler who could track his lineage back to Alexander the Great’s general. This lineage was through his maternal grandmother, Kleopatra VII of Egypt. It is tempting to read the boy’s concerned, rather pinched expression as
Plopped among the stringy necks of Republican worthies, Julio-Claudian chiseled cheekbones, and Vespasian’s cultivated crag, this portrait in Copenhagen is a big fat outlier. The fleshy marble giant is usually thought to represent Vitellius, famous for his diminutive reign and outsized appetites, with its unusual corpulence a nod to the emperor’s physical reality. If ancient
Is there any profile more lovely than that of Antinöos, that beautiful rustic beloved by Hadrian? I think not, and of the all the surviving portraits of him, this one in slightly translucent black chalcedony is by far my favorite. Born in Bithynia (the northern Black Sea coastline of Asia Minor), the comely youth caught
Chances are you have glimpsed a ‘Fayoum portrait’ in one of the world’s great museums or reproduced online. They tend to leave an impression, so effectively capturing fleeting Roman likenesses for the ages. At the risk of being too grandiose (guilty, usually), I would venture to proclaim them one of the best remaining glimmers of
With that troubled brow, sharp cat-like cheekbones, and slightly downturned eyes, this soulful portrait is most beguiling and attractive. It was excavated in 1861 near the Temple of Apollo in Cyrene (modern Libya), but most essential facts about his identity and dating continue to elude scholars. The casting, coldwork (check out those wispy chin hairs)
Plaited, twined, and knotted to pool over her brow, this young woman’s hairstyle is one of the most elaborate of the increasingly far-fetched hairy confections of the Roman Empire. Her identity is not known and that prim expression gives little away, but the quality of the carving sees to indicate she was from an aristocratic
This portrait came as something as a shock to me – I’m used to seeing shined up Severan portraits with stylised somnolent eyes, alarming hairdos, and an all together more graphic, surface-oriented approach to the carving (if that convoluted thought makes any kind of sense). Here, the heavy-lidded third century aspect is there, not exaggerated
Livia is one of those characters I just can’t bring myself to like for reasons difficult to pin down, perhaps owing to her portrayal as meddlesome kingmaker in ancient literature and modern television series, and partly because of a personal aversion to the hairstyle she popularised (the odious ‘nodus’). But those are my issues (mea
I love this stripped down face. Without the voluminous surround of her coiffure (usually plaited, looped upon itself, perhaps netted, perhaps a true wig) Julia Mammea looks so very much like her son Alexander, the young emperor who was assassinated in her arms. It was the early 3rd century A.D. (a time of impending crises
With that designer scruff of a beard and magnificent hat, there’s a lot to love about this portrait, but there is much more at play here than a manly fashion statement… Because that’s no ordinary hat: it is a kausia (the special northern cousin of the petasos, the Greek traveler’s hat) nestled on his head
I count this as one of the most glorious (and innovative?) of all Roman imperial portraits: Caracalla, with his fierce glower in the years just before he became sole-ruler (more on that later…). He arguably inherited an empire already on a downward slide. Born in Gaul, even his parentage spoke to a vast territory, Septimius
Staggering in terms of preservation and beauty, undeniably masterful bronze working (and those unsettling eyes!), this head of Augustus is in every survey book on Roman art and portraiture worth its salt. It shows Augustus, the freshly minted princeps of Rome, as a young man, which he was at the time of this portrait’s manufacture
I admit it: I don’t overly like Livia, the wife of Augustus, and a true political operator. I dislike her fashionable nodus hairstyle even more vehemently (I’ll save these gripes for another post…). That’s all besides the point here. This is a masterpiece in miniature (approximately 3 x 3 cm) and frankly a sort of
Many are familiar with Alexander the Great and his distinctive portraiture. And indeed the young genius was idolized from the time of his death to Napoleon and beyond! Shown here is Pompey the Great (Pompey Magnus), who built his military reputation young and forcefully. Before he formally added Magnus to his name (deliberately echoing Alexander
Commodus was not necessarily a deranged, power-hungry sadist, but this lazy-eyed, buffed up portrait of the emperor wearing the attributes of Hercules certainly does beg the question… It’s a terrific spectacle, found in the city of Rome on the Esquiline and now in the Musei Capitolini. The emperor’s lush cap of curls is covered by
Napoleon had a keen eye for beautiful pilfered things to bring back to his capital city, and (in my view) this is one of the best! Known as the “Borghese Krater”, it is a mammoth (nearly 2 meters tall!) vase sculpted out of Pentelic marble, and it is a marvel to behold. Rollicking around the
Full of swagger and pre-Caracallan glower, this is one of my favourite portraits of all time, showing a young Roman military man (identity unknown) likely from the mid-2nd century A.D. There is so much to love here: the cultivated, designer stubble, feathery eyebrows, assertive turn of the head, and those barely parted, full lips. He
Striking, isn’t it, that a princess with the most tragic life and death (beware of lecherous uncles…dirty Domitian, I’m looking at you!) has one of the sweetest, most appealing portraits of the period?When the ladies of the imperial court presented themselves with fancy (sometimes freaky) fashion hairdos piled high over their aged brows, her restrained
What happens when you transform the face of a pudgy young potentate into that of a dour old military leader? A peculiar portrait, indeed! The head is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, acquired in the 1920’s when it was attached erroneously to a toga-draped body. The peculiarities alluded to are the weird tilt
Mimesis on my mind, and gravitating towards bronze today. If the artistic reproduction of reality was the goal, bronze was king, and it had been since atleast the Early Classical period. Life sized bronzes do not survive in great quantities (when they do they are spectacular), but literary evidence indicates that the most acclaimed of
One doesn’t see ancient life-sized terracotta sculptures every day, and this is perhaps the most remarkable to have survived. This remarkable bust was found between Pozzuoli and Cumae in the 19th century and was likely produced locally during the mid-first century B.C. Art history survey courses understandably harp on about Roman ‘verism’ and the ‘warts
Discovered in 1928, the silver hoard from Marengo (Piemonte) is spectacular and worth a trip to Torino. And this is its star: a silver bust of the emperor Lucius Verus, instantly recognisable by his luxuriant curls, simian hairline, slightly forked beard, and narrow jaw. The thin and brittle silver walls were a bit squashed, giving
The intermittent discoveries of spectacular ancient bronzes have a way of reminding us just how much we’re missing from antiquity and igniting the imagination… This head with assertively bushy beard, tousled hair and intense glare, was excavated by a Bulgarian team in 2004, and most likely represents Seuthes III. The Thracian king ruled the the
You might not have heard of Juba II or Volubilis, but this over life-sized bronze portrait somehow sums up the man’s impossible life – a mix of early tragedy, power, and making things work in a tight spot. Juba was born as the prince of Numidia and was only a toddler when his father committed