A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT HEAD OF A YOUTH
A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT HEAD OF A YOUTH
Circa late 2nd - early 3rd century A.D.
Material
Marble
Dimensions
Height 60,2 cm including bust
Provenance
– Private Collection, Europe, circa 17th-18th century (based on restoration techniques, according to Sotheby’s).
– Benjamin Smith (1941–2021), Atlanta, Georgia, acquired by 1991.
– Property from the Collection of Ben Smith, Atlanta; Ancient Sculpture and Works of Art, Part II, Sotheby’s, London, 7 December 2022, lot 123.
– Kallos Gallery, London, 2023 (Catalogue 14, no. 37).
Description
The sitter is portrayed as a young man with a smooth forehead and cheeks, narrowing to a pointed chin. His eyes feature incised irises and drilled pupils, and sit below bushy eyebrows. He is closely related to two other examples, one in the Capitoline Museums (Sala delle Colombe 32, inv. no. 391), and the other in the Musée Saint-Raymond, Toulouse (inv. no. RA 68.1). His attribution, however, is more complicated. Though both portraits were once seen as Pertinax Caesar, the son of emperor Pertinax named princeps iuventutis in 193 A.D., a more convincing identification now is Gaius Fulvius Plautius Hortensianus, son of the Praetorian prefect Plautianus (for a discussion of the type and its attribution, see J.-C. Balty, Les Portraits Romains: L’époque des Sévères, pp. 161-168).