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Four Roman portraits in the Piraeus Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2013

J. M. C. Toynbee
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Extract

Among the local finds displayed in the Museum of Antiquities at the Piraeus are six Roman portraits, all of Pentelic marble and all unrestored. Two of them, a colossal head of Trajan (no. 270) and a colossal statue of Balbinus (no. 278), have already been fully edited. But according to the Director of the Piraeus Museum, Dr. Threpsiades, and to the best of the present writer's knowledge, of the other portraits two are still unpublished, two described without any illustration; and it is with Dr. Threpsiades' kind permission that all four are published here.

I. No. E 4. Head of Claudius(Plate 67a–b)

Total height: 48 cm.

Height from crown of head to bottom of chin: 26 cm.

Width across at greatest extent: 20 cm.

Width from back to front at greatest extent: 24 cm.

The sculpture depicts the head and neck, slightly over life-size, of an elderly man, in whom we can immediately recognize the Emperor Claudius. At the base of the neck is a rounded ‘tenon’, designed for insertion into a cavity between the shoulders of the now vanished body of a full-length statue. Claudius' face has sustained considerable damage. The nose has practically gone, only part of the side, and the hollow interior, of the right nostril remaining. The chin, lips, and right ear are bruised, the brow is marred by several abrasures, and the left ear is lost.

Type
Articles
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 53 , November 1959 , pp. 285 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1959

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References

1 Trajan: Gross, W. H., Bildnisse Traians (1940) no. 54, 74, 101 f., pl. 27bGoogle Scholar; Carducci, C., ‘Ritratto dell'imperatore Traiano conservato nel Museo di Pireo’ (Bull. Mus. Imp. Rom. iv (1933) 37–43, figs. 1, 2)Google Scholar; Balbinus, : JOAI xxix (1935) 97–108, pls. 4–6Google Scholar. (Dr. Cornelius Vermeule informs me that he has discovered fragments of a companion colossal statue of Pupienus in the garden and apotheke of the museum.)

2 The photographs of the four portraits were kindly taken for the present writer in 1954 by Mr. John Boardman, then Assistant Director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens.

3 Identified as Claudius, and described, without illustration, by Stuart, M. in The Portraiture of Claudius: Preliminary Studies (1938) 74–75, no. 29Google Scholar. Cf. AJA xxxv (1931) 91; Graindor, P., Athènes de Tibère à Trajan (1931) 183, n. 1.Google Scholar

4 Archaeologia xlv (1880) pl. 1.

5 Eichler, F. and Kris, E., Die Kameen im Kunsthistorischen Museum, Wien (1927) pl. 9.Google Scholar

6 British Museum Quarterly xiii (1939) 79–81, pl. 33b.

7 West, R., Römische Porträt-Plastik i (1933) pl. 56, no. 243Google Scholar; Anderson, Roma, no. 24225.

8 Lippold, G., Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, iii. 1 (1936) no. 550, pl. 41Google Scholar; Alinari, Roma, no. 6535; Anderson, Roma, nos. 1233, 1340, 2252; German Institute in Rome negative xxi–23–42.

9 British Museum Quarterly xix (1954) 64–65, pl. 25.

10 Nero 51.

11 West, op. cit. pl. 62, no. 272.

12 Stuart, op. cit. 75–76, no. 30: the portrait is described without illustration.

13 Lippold, op. cit. pls. 41, 42; West, op. cit. pl. 57, no. 244.

14 Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum i (1923) pls. 35, nos. 1, 6; 36, no. 5.

15 IG ii–iii. 32, i (1935) no. 4737. The editor describes the inscription as being cut on a ‘protome viri imberbis’, failing to observe the stippled beard.

16 Le Arti ii (1939) 4–5, pl. 1, figs. 2, 3.

17 Smith, A. H., Catalogue of Sculptures in the British Museum iii (1904) 180, no. 1963, pl. 20.Google Scholar

18 JHS xx (1900) 33–34, pl. 2.

19 e.g. the clean-shaven man, with realistic features, who accompanies Hadrian in the hunting and sacrificing scenes of the ‘tondi’ on the Arch of Constantine (L'Orange, H. P. and von Gerkan, A., Der spätantike Bildschmuck des Konstantinsbogens (1939) pls. 40–42).Google Scholar

20 Ed. Jones, H. Stuart, Catalogue of Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino (1912) 210, no. 73, pl. 51Google Scholar; Anderson, Roma, no. 1635. The laurel-wreath suggests that the subject was portrayed as participating in some ceremonial rite.

21 e.g. on the Flavian reliefs from the Cancelleria and in the Louvre. Cancelleria: Magi, F., I Rilievi flavi della Cancelleria (1945) pl. 3Google Scholar; Louvre: Strong, E., La Scultura Romana i (1923) pl. 24.Google Scholar

22 Ed. Stuart Jones, op. cit. 209–10, no. 70, pls. 50, 51; E. Strong, op. cit. ii (1926) pl. 78; Anderson, Roma, no. 1553; German Institute in Rome negative 4264.

23 No. 75. German Institute in Athens negative 386.

24 See n. 1.