Details
A ROMAN MARBLE EMPEROR
CIRCA LATE 1ST-EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.
Depicted standing with his weight on his right leg, the left knee bent, his left arm lowered, the right extending outward, his layered attire including, innermost, a wool tunic, visible on his thighs and left arm, followed by a leather garment with long straps protecting his groin and shoulders, each strap with tasseled ends, then a metal cuirass with naturalistically-modelled musculature, consisting of a breastplate and back-plate, the sections joined by shoulder straps, and outermost, a paludamentum draped over his left shoulder and around his left arm, the cuirass breastplate sculpted in shallow relief, with a gorgoneion between the shoulder straps, the facing grimacing head with wings in her hair and snakes knotted below her chin, confronting winged horned lion-griffins on the abdomen, an incense burner between them, each with a raised forepaw, standing on scrolling vines framing rosettes and a descending palmette in the center, a double row of hinged tongue-shaped pteryges below, each sculpted in relief, the upper row centered by a bearded horned head, perhaps Zeus Ammon, flanked by facing heads of Medusa, profile ram heads, and overlapping shields, a ram head, a bucranion, rosettes, a palmette and a circular shield on the back, the lower row centered by a lotus blossom, flanked by flayed animal heads and rosettes, with a flayed animal head and a blossom on the back, recessed at the neck to receive the separately-made and now-missing portrait head
47 in. (119.4 cm.) high
Literature
"Notable Works of Art now on the Market," in Burlington Magazine, December 1975, pl. III.
K. Stemmer, Untersuchungen zur Typologie, Chronologie und Ikonographie der Panzerstatuen, Berlin, 1978, no. I 10a, pl. 7, 1-2. C.C. Vermeule, "Cuirassed Statues - 1978 Supplement," in Berytus, vol. XXVI, 1978, pp. 95-97, fig. 3-4, no. 130A.
C.C. Vermeule, Hellenistic and Roman Cuirassed Statues, Boston, 1980, no. 49, pl. 89.
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