SEVERAN PERIOD, CIRCA EARLY 3RD CENTURY A.D.

Severan portraiture, both imperial and private, draws significant inspiration from its Antonine predecessors. According to D.E.E. Kleiner (Roman Sculpture, p. 319), this was partly a result of Septimius Severus' desire to legitimize his dynastic reign by empathizing a fictionalized biological tie to the line of Antoninus Pius. This accounts for the tendency of male portraits from this period to sport the wavy hair, curly beard and overhanging mustache seen in the present example. For a strikingly similar head, dating to the reign of Caracalla, (211-217 A.D.), perhaps depicting the same individual, see no. 133, in K. Fittschen, P. Zanker and P. Cain, Katalog der Römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen Kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom.