Well I’ve been nose to the grindstone working on a deadline, and not coming up for air much to post – one must wait for inspiration to strike, after all. Well, when poring through the supremely useful “Last Statues of Antiquity” database out of Oxford (Bert Smith’s brainchild…alas, I don’t own the most excellent book with the same title), came across this fantastic portrait – a favourite, and too good not to share!
With those huge, slightly crossed eyes, slightly creepy close-lipped smile, and weirdly stippled, weirdly droopy moustache, it’s as wonky as they come and full of the bonkers charm that seems to accompany the Late Antique aesthetic – particularly in Asia Minor. The subject is Licinius, the sometime co-ruler and eventual rival of Constantine. At 86 cm tall, the head is colossal, and was excavated beneath the theatre at Ephesus by the Austrian mission in the late 19th century. He now resides in Vienna.
The quality of marble and carving is top notch, but what I am fascinated by is the way the sculptor approaches the surface – shallow and symmetrical in some places almost to the point of abstract patterning. Crescent-shaped eye bags, dimples over those dramatic eyebrows, and the stippling of the facial hair beneath relentlessly triangular nasolabial creases…It’s a totally different way to treat anatomy – when it occurs on porphyry portraits and hard stone, it can be explained away. But this gentleman reveals the extent to which it was an artistic choice – a striking and effective one especially at this scale, and perhaps also the result of recarving an earlier imperial head…
