REPUBLICAN PERIOD, CIRCA LATE 1ST CENTURY B.C.

In a letter to the previous owner from 1991, Cornelius C. Vermeule wrote: "This Republican head does look like Julius Caesar, but is probably someone else of his era, like the head restored on the Barberini togatus of the man holding the busts of his two ancestors. There was also a great vogue for reviving Republican portraiture in the late First and early Second centuries A.D., and Republican lookalikes, such as Hadrian's brother-in-law L. Julius Ursus Servianus."

As Vermeule notes, this example's likeness to Julius Caesar is striking, particularly to a bust of the dictator known as the "Chiaramonti-Pisa Type," now in the Vatican Museum (see F.S. Johansen, "The Portraits of Marble of Gaius Julius Caesar: A Review," fig. 1a). As he goes on to explain however, it was common practice beginning in the Republican era to commission private likeness after prominent public figures and likely this is what we have here. In his extensive study, Johansen writes that he believes only two actual representations of Caesar himself exist in marble, the first being the aforementioned example, and the other being a bust thought to be commissioned in his lifetime, known as the "Tusculum type" (see figs. 1a and 15a, op. cit.). Nevertheless, the present example illustrates that while the veristic style was certainly in vogue with reference to Republican portraiture, it did not prohibit artists nor their patrons from using other people's likenesses as inspiration.