This head with its broad forehead, narrow chin, and long scrawny neck is so similar to portraits of Julius Caesar as he appears on coins and in sculpture that, in the past, it was identified as that famous general and politician. Perhaps the man who is the actual subject of the portrait wished to accentuate this resemblance because he sympathized with the dictatorship of Caesar or with the cause of his party, the populares.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Marble portrait of a man
Period:Late Republican or Early Augustan
Date:late 1st century BCE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Marble
Dimensions:12 3/8 x 7 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (31.5 x 19.7 x 19.7 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1921
Accession Number:21.88.14
Found in Egypt in 1898
1898, found in Egypt; purchased by Joseph von Korp; 1899-1910, collection of Count Grigoriy Sergeyevich Stroganov, Palazzo Stroganov, Rome; from 1910 and until 1920, with his descendants, Palazzo Stroganov, Rome; [ca. 1920, purchased by Giorgio Sangiorgi, Rome]; acquired in 1921, purchased from G. Sangiorgi.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1925. "Recent Accessions of Ancient Marbles." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20(4): p. 106.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 289, 292, fig. 203, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 289, 292, fig. 203, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1940. "A Rearrangement of Roman Portraits." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 35(10): p. 201.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1941. Roman Portraits, Vol. 1. no. 3, p. 1, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1948. Roman Portraits, 2nd edn. no. 3, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Adriani, Achille. 1970. "Ritratti dell'Egitto greco - romano." Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung, 77: pp. 77–78, 104, pl. 33.2.
Hüfler, Brigitte. 1980. Bilder vom Menschen in der Kunst des Abendlandes: Jubiläumsausstellung der Preussischen Museen Berlin 1830-1980. no. 38, pp. 72–73, Berlin: Die Museen.
Smith, Roland R.R. 1991. Hellenistic Sculpture: a handbook , World of Art. p. 257, fig. 325, New York: Thames and Hudson.
Milleker, Elizabeth J. 2000. The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West, Elizabeth J. Milleker, ed. no. 9, pp. 28–29, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walker, Susan and Peter Higgs. 2001. Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth. no. 206, pp. 224–25, London: British Museum.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 382, pp. 331, 481, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Johnson, Horton A. 2009. "The Diagnosis of Art: Facial Nerve Palsy in Ancient Rome." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 102: pp. 296–97.
Zanker, Paul. 2016. Roman Portraits: Sculptures in Stone and Bronze in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 35, pp. 112, 116–17, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. no. 159, pp. 316–17, New York: Scala Publishers.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
