1987.05

Marble Portrait Head of a Man

Purchased. Pres.ht 22.9cm; max width ca 18.7cm.

Dense, fine white marble. The portrait is broken off at the neck and the back of the head is missing. The face is somewhat battered, with damage to the right forehead and eye, the nose, the mouth and chin, and both ears; there is also some surface abrasion on the right cheek. There is a rectangular tenon-hole in the hair above the right ear, partially filled with cement about a square hole (ancient?). There is a modern support hole drilled in the base.

The head has wavy hair combed forward, leaving a fairly high forehead. There are two pronounced ridges on the forehead and a vertical furrow above the nose. The preserved left eyebrow is raised (its hair lightly marked) revealing a sag of skin between it and the edge of the upper eyelid. The iris is slightly depressed and the pupil within that, set high and partly overlapped by the upper lid. The eyes are shown as large and fairly wide open. There are bags under the eyes.

The lower face is heavily joweled with creases running down from the sides of the nostrils. The mouth seems to have been rather pursed. There are folds of skin under the chin by the neck.

The finish of the face seems to have been fairly good and smooth; the treatment of the hair was left rougher.

In his article “The Public Image of Licinius I: Portrait Sculpture and Imperial Ideology in the Early Fourth Century”, Journal of Roman Studies 87, 1997, 170-202, R.R.R. Smith attributes the head to that Emperor (AD 308-324 and rival of Constantine). He provides a careful description and relates it to the tradition of portraits in Vienna, Izmir and Leiden. He not unreasonably suspects that our head came from Asia Minor. He also suggests that it was a recycled piece, carved from an earlier head, and this too seems likely.

Smith also provides a good survey of relevant historical sources. On later portraits more generally, see the useful article by M. Bergmann  and M. Kovacs, “Portrait Style”, in: R.R.R. Smith and B. Ward-Perkins (eds), The Last Statues of Antiquity (Oxford 2016) 280-294. For a gold (in a private collection) and a silver bust of Licinius (in Munich), see A. de Pury-Gysel, Die Goldbüste des Septimius Severus. Gold- und Silberbüsten römischer Kaiser (Basle-Frankfurt 2017) 120-123 and 168-171.

Sotheby (London), Sale Cat., 17 July 1985, no. 281; Sotheby (London), Sale Cat., 18 May 1987, no. 206, pl.10; Journal of Roman Studies 87, 1997, 189-190, pl. 6, 2 (R.R.R. Smith).