LOT 0126

Life-Size Roman Bronze Head of an Empress

MID-3RD CENTURY A.D.

15 7/8 in. (4.07 kg, 40.5 cm high including stand).

A member of the Imperial family, possibly an empress, depicted with an elaborate coiffure, the hair at the back of the head parted in the middle and the two strands folded over each other, then pulled to the front to form a looped horizontal layer parted in the middle of the smooth forehead and drawn back, individual curls represented as vertical lines along the forehead hairline up to the exposed ears, two locks hanging down the sides behind the ears, extending to the upper part of the neck; beautiful facial rendering with stoic expression, exquisite detailing to the eyebrows, eyelids and pupils; snub-nose, closed lips, thin and graceful neck; mounted on a custom-made display stand.

Acquired on the German art market, early 1970s.
German private family collection; by gift to the owner's son in 2015.
Private collection, London.

Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffele D'Amato, and Dr Marina Mattei, former curator of the Capitoline Museums for over 40 years.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by a search certificate number no.12607-234556.

Cf. Felletti Maj, B.M., Museo Nazionale Romano, I Ritratti, Roma, 1953; Bianchi Bandinelli, R., Roma: la fine dell’arte Antica, Milano, 1970; Zanker, P., Roman Portraits: Sculptures in Stone and Bronze in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016, fig.30.

The oval, gaunt, deep-set eyes and the folds at the sides of the nose and mouth reveal the mature age of the woman depicted in the portrait. The woman’s head shows the typical traits of the full and mature 3rd century A.D., executed in a Hellenistic style tradition. Our sculpture fits well in the imperial portrait type, bearing technical and aesthetic parallels to portraits in bronze. The hairstyle could be Scheitelzopf (or reverse plait), tightened by a hairnet, pinned to the top of the head. The same type of hairstyle, albeit with variations in the details (decorative curls and position of the hair loop), is found on a few other portraits of women that were dated to the period of Gallienus by Marianne Bergmann. Some of the portraits in this typologically related group are likely to be private portraits. Hereby, physiognomic features and especially imperial coin portraits need to be taken into account. In this context, it is important to compare the portrait with that of Trebonianus Gallus in the MET.

Like the sculpture of Trebonianus Gallus, the head fits stylistically with Roman provincial bronzes from the Eastern Mediterranean or North Africa, possibly from workshops of Asia Minor or from the great metropolis of Alexandria, where bronze statuary was more common and Hellenistic influences remained strong.