Bust of a Roman

The anxious expression, bulging eyes, and cropped hair suggest emulation of Roman portraiture of the Julio-Claudian age.[1] The bust, an unchased indirect cast, exhibits mold cracks and bubble marks from casting in plaster, which suggests a northern Italian origin. Northern Italy certainly produced classicizing busts, but here the imitation of Republican style is so sedulously archaeological as to suggest a much later date, and the extremely thin casting implies the hand of a silversmith regardless of date or place.[2] A distinctly superior version, with pronounced, high cheekbones, is in the Galleria Estense, Modena (fig. 28a).[3] It is no doubt the original, its slightly larger size proving that ours is a shrunken after-cast of it. In Modena, it is paired with a bust of a woman in braids, apparently the one cited in the 1584 inventory of Alfonso II d’Este, duke of Ferrara. Currently, both are improbably assigned to Nicolò Roccatagliata.[4]

A charming feature of the present work, absent from the Modena bronze, is the integrally cast scrolling floral volute on the back (fig. 28b). It once formed the top of a prong or strap that anchored the bust to the rear of its lost original base. The Modena bust has better-formed irises against the stained-bone whites of the eyes and a crisper rendering of the feathered locks, particularly noticeable at the crown of the head. In our bust, by contrast, these areas are mere blurs.
-JDD

Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.)


1. Compare, for example, ancient portraits sometimes discussed in relation to Brutus, such as a male bust in The Met, 14.40.696; see Picón et al. 2007, no. 381. The Augustan age also produced miniature bronze busts that could have inspired ours, for example, Kunsthistorisches Museum, VI 273.
2. R. Stone/TR, October 13, 2011.
3. Bode 1907–12, vol. 2, pl. CVII (as after the antique); Planiscig 1930, pl. 103 (as North Italian, 16th century, height mistakenly given as 12 cm); Salvini 1955, p. 41 (as North Italian, late 15th century); Franzoni 1982–83, p. 331, figs. 6, 7 (as Julius Caesar, discussed with a dissimilar self-portrait by Giulio della Torre [1481–ca. 1557], active in Verona and Padua, belonging to the Fondazione Miniscalchi Erizzo, Verona).
4. Information supplied by Annunziata Lanzetta. The female bust, with tiny shoulders, originally had glass eyes and a glass or enamel brooch and has a fifteenth-century appearance.