Portrait of Nero
This representation of the Emperor Nero shows him with a full, oval face. His hair is thick though not well defined, and his carefully styled beard forms horizontal lines of curls on his cheeks. His eyes are small, while his eyebrows are raised toward the sides of his face, lending his gaze an air of cruelty, which the sculptor evidently considered one of his essential attributes. His bust is wrapped in the paludamentum, in accordance with the custom of this type of portrait.
Together with 15 other portraits that make up the series, the bust was first displayed in the Gallery of Mirrors in Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio and then transferred to Room 4 of Villa Pinciana no later than 1832.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
porphyry and oriental alabaster
Dimensions
Provenance
Included in decoration of the Gallery of Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio between 1674 and 1676 (H. Hibbard, ‘Palazzo Borghese Studies. II, the Galleria’, The Burlington Magazine, 104 (1962), pp. 9-20); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, C, p. 49, no. 111. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1995/1996 C.B.C. Coop. a.r.l.
Commentary
The work portrays Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the fifth Roman emperor and the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. He reigned from 54 to 68. His depiction here is characterised by thick, compact hair consisting of wavy parallel locks that terminate on his forehead, covering a large part of it, and extending to the nape of his neck. His eyes are small, with well defined eyelids. His nose is straight with a pointed tip, while the grooves around his nose and lips are clearly visible. The corners of his mouth are turned downward; his upper lip shows a slight moustache. His beard covers a significant portion of his cheeks and neck below the chin; it is styled to form roughly horizontal lines.
The bust is wrapped in a broad paludamentum, which is buttoned on his right shoulder by a round fibula, below which the hem of his tunic can be seen, at the level of his neck.
The work forms part of a series of 16 busts in porphyry from Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio: they reproduce the Twelve Caesars narrated by Suetonius, with the addition of Nerva and Trajan and second versions of Vitellius and Titus. They were formerly placed in recesses in the gallery and framed by an arrangement of plaster reliefs depicting key episodes in the life of each and personifications of their respective virtues; this decoration was executed by Cosimo Fancelli between 1674 and 1676 (Hibbard 1962). The busts remained here until roughly 1830 (Nibby, p. 360): two years later, they are documented as forming part of the display of Room 4 of Villa Pinciana (Nibby 1832, p. 96). To the series was now added a second bust of Vespasian, sculpted by Tommaso Fedeli in 1619, which had been in the Gladiator Room.
According to documents from the Borghese Archive, the series was composed, as we have seen, of the ‘Twelve Caesars’, with the addition of Nerva and Trajan as well as second versions of Vitellius and Titus (Vatican Secret Archive, AB, b. 5688, no. 15, published in Hibbard 1962, appendix, doc. I, pp. 19-20). In 1830 Nibby saw the series when it was still in Campo Marzio, describing the works as ‘16 busts with heads in porphyry, representing the 12 Caesars and 4 consuls’. Two years later, when they had been moved to Villa Pinciana and displayed along the wall of Room 4, he listed them as Trajan, Galba, Claudius, Otho, Vespasian (two exemplars) Scipio Africanus, Agrippa, Augustus, Vitellius (two exemplars), Titus, Nero, Cicero, Domitian, Vespasian, Caligula and Tiberius; this catalogue was confirmed by the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario.
Yet if this description (which includes a second Vespasian, executed by Tommaso Fedeli in 1619 and transferred from the Gladiator Room) corresponds to the current state of the series, we are left with several uncertainties: to begin with, we must ask what happened to the busts of Caesar, Titus and Nerva, which were present in 1674-76 but do not form part of the series today; secondly, we must wonder who the fourth consul referred to by Nibby in 1830 could be, given that currently only three are represented (Agrippa, Cicero and Scipio Africanus); and finally, we must inquire where the busts of the consuls came from. It is therefore possible that the sculptures displayed in the gallery, which were already present in Palazzo Borghese, did not correspond to those envisioned for the iconographic programme of the vault: this discrepancy may have indeed complicated the identification of the portraits. This theory is supported by the common date of execution of the busts, which critics believe were all sculpted in the same period during the 17th century (Faldi 1954, pp. 16-17; Della Pergola, 1974; Moreno, C. Stefani, 2000, p. 129; Del Bufalo 2018, p. 116).
Sonja Felici
Bibliography
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