A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT OF A MAN

CIRCA MID-3RD CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT OF A MAN
circa mid-3rd century a.d.
Life-sized, depicted with a full beard of voluted curls, sparse along his chin, no whiskers at all beyond the corners of his mouth or below his lower lip, his thin lips pressed tightly together, a slight mustache incised on his upper lip, with wide-open, lidded convex eyes beneath modeled brows, the irises incised, the pupils drilled, his hair arranged in rows of short, comma-shaped locks radiating from the crown of his head, ending in a straight line across his forehead, sculpted nearly in the round except for the very back of the head, suggesting placement in a niche, the long neck with a cone-shaped extension for insertion into a separately carved statue
13 in. (34.3 cm.) high excluding the conical extension

Literature

Jucker and Willers, Gesichter, Griechische und rmische Bildnisse aus Schweizer Besitz, no.85.

Exhibited

Gesichter, Griechische und rmische Bildnisse aus Schweizer Besitz, Bernischen Historischen Museum, 6 November 1982 - 6 February 1983

Lot Essay

In A.D. 253 Gallienus was appointed Augustus, or co-regent, by his father the emperor Valerian. Following Valerian's capture by the Sassanians in 260, Gallienus became emperor and managed to maintain power until A.D. 268. This is an unusually long reign for the chaotic 3rd Century, and as such, a development in his portraiture can be recognized. Portraiture of the emperor during the so-called "Gallienic Renaissance" deliberately borrows from images of earlier Roman emperors, such as Augustus and Hadrian. One wonders if this was a conscious dynastic manifesto, or rather, simply the result of the recutting of the earlier portraits caused by "the decline in the marble trade occasioned by the disruption of Rome's international economy."(1) The present portrait is clearly recognizable as Gallienus through comparison with the numismatic evidence, and must date to late in his reign. The cubistic abstraction of this portrait foreshadows the style of the Tetrarchs towards the end of the 3rd Century.

(1) Anderson in Glories of the Past, p. 222.

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