CIRCA LATE 1ST CENTURY B.C.-EARLY 1ST CENTURY A.D.

細節

A ROMAN BRONZE PORTRAIT OF A MAN
Circa Late 1st Century B.C.-Early 1st Century A.D.
Realistically portraying a middle-aged man, perhaps in his 50s, with a solemn countenance, his closely cropped hair rendered in relief with comma-shaped locks, his hairline receding at the corners, with pronounced ears, undulating shallow wrinkles across the forehead, crow's feet at the corners of his eyes and a furrowed brow, his cheeks deeply sunken-in, with accentuated naso-labial folds, his now-missing eyes once inlaid, traces of their plaster backing still evident, especially in the left eye, his closed mouth slightly down-turned, the cracks along the surface of his lips rendered, his jowls sagging slightly, the thin neck with softly-modeled adam's apple, hollowed clavicular notch, and sharp collar bones
14½ in. (36.8 cm) high

拍品專文

During the late Roman Republic, ca. 1st century B.C., there was an emergence of portraiture in Italy centered primarily around Rome. This trend coincided with the development of ancestral reverence by which wax masks of deceased family members were displayed in household shrines. As these images (imagines, in Latin) were molded directly onto the flesh of the deceased, they revealed a fully realistic portrayal of their subject. This tradition brought about the verism of Republican portrait sculpture, where skin texture, blemishes, wrinkles and stark realism were the chosen artistic vocabulary.

Two portraits, perhaps from the same workshop as our piece, formerly in the William Herbert Hunt Collection, are now on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. See nos. 43 & 44, pp. 126-129 in von Bothmer, et al., Wealth of the Ancient World, The Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt Collections.

A metallurgical analysis confirming that the metal is consistent with bronzes of this period accompanies this lot.