Portrait of a Young Man, on a modern bust with loric and paludamentum

Roman art

This portrait, set on a modern bust, portrays a young man with hard, squarish features and a broad forehead framed by short, thick hair. The horizontal lines on the figure’s forehead give him a thoughtful, concentrated air. The rigid structure of the clearly defined features links the face to imperial portraiture from the first half of the third century CE.

The bust was reported in the Palazzina Borghese in 1828, along with fifteen others, all displayed on shelves in the portico.

Object details

Commentary

This sculpture was mentioned for the first time in the PalazzinaBorghese in 1828: ‘In the Portico of the above-said Casino […] No. 16 Busts on as many shelves’ (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Arch. Borghese 348, Galleria e Museo. Titoli diversi, fasc. 33, 1828, c. 6r). In the guide by Venturi published in 1893, there were fourteen busts on the shelves (p. 12). In the literature, it is generally described along with the other busts displayed in the portico, without a detailed description. In 1957, Calza was the first to describe it individually, identifying it as a ‘portrait head of a young man from the Julio-Claudian period; bust not original (p. 14, no. 120). Moreno initially saw it as similar to portraits of Caracalla, reworked in the modern period. Later, however, he judged the features to be more similar to those of Emperor Alexander Severus or Gordian III and, more generally, portraiture from the third and fourth decades of the third century CE (Moreno 1980, p. 6; Moreno, Viacava 2003, pp. 64–65, no. 9).

The portrait depicts a young man with clearly defined, squarish features. His head is slightly turned to the left. His face, which narrows a little towards the chin, has a broad forehead framed by short, thick hair carved in relief and vaguely distinguished locks that reveal the ears. The clearly defined eyes, with swollen, protruding eyelids, are topped by thick eyebrows. The corners of the small mouth are deeply incised. There are two long horizontal lines across the forehead that give the figure an intense, absorbed expression. The line where the head is attached to the neck is clearly visible. The modern bust is clothed in a lorica decorated with the head of a Gorgon in relief on the chest.  There is a paludamentum on the left shoulder, held by a fibula. The sculpture is heavily restored, especially the surface, which was broadly reworked. The facial features and hair, in particular the long locks in front of the ears, are compatible with imperial portraiture from the Severan period, in the first half of the third century CE, and can be fruitfully compared to several portraits in the Museo Nazionale Romano (Felletti-Maj 1953, pp. 276, 277, 281). There also seem to be strong affinities with two similar busts of Alexander Severus: one in the Torlonia Collection and another in the Sala degli Imperatori in the Capitoline Museum (de Lachenal2020, pp. 240–241; Smith 2015, p. 340).

Giulia Ciccarello