A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT BUST OF A PRIEST

CIRCA EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT BUST OF A PRIEST
CIRCA EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.
Lifesized, depicting a distinguished man of middle age, his head turned to his right, wearing a tunic with V-shaped folds at the front and a thick mantle draped over his left shoulder, with naturalistic physiognomy, including a creased forehead, a knitted brow, a blunt, rounded nose, deep-set unarticulated eyes with thick lids, shallow under-eye bags and pronounced naso-labial folds, his full beard and mustache closely cropped, his head bald but for thick wavy locks at the sides and a small tuft at the top of his forehead, crowned with a cylindrical diadem of overlapping leaves
16¾ in. (42.5 cm.) high

Provenance

European Private Collection, 1995.

Lot Essay

The diadem worn here, cylindrical in form with overlapping leaves, either laurel or olive, most likely represents a gold original. Such diadems signified that the wearer held a priestly office. For a similar diadem on a portrait of a priest see the example at The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford [no. AN2005.11], pp. 5-6 in Smith and Vickers, "A Roman priest from the eastern Mediterranean," The Ashmolean, 49.

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