Two Roman Portrait-Busts in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek1

Abstract

Fig. I, on plate v, represents a female bust, acquired in 1888 at Hoffmann's sale in Paris and published in Arndt-Bruckmann, Griechische und römische Porträts, pl. 565, from which our illustration is reproduced. The height of the bust is cm. 46, or, including the modern foot, cm. 61. It is in excellent preservation; even the tip of the nose is original, and intact save for a little break on the top. The surface is slightly weathered, and is covered here and there with calcareous deposit; but some parts have still the fine porcelain-like surface which sculptors of the second and third centuries A.D. knew how to give to their marble by polishing. The person represented is a young woman, clad in a tunic and with a mantle thrown over her shoulders. The expression is weary, too melancholy and despondent for one so young, perhaps also a little haughty with the prominent upper lip. The features are delicate and noble. The head is quietly turned towards the left shoulder. The hair is separately carved and loosely added. Such wigs in stone appear frequently in portraits of the end of the second and the beginning of the third centuries A.D., but in earlier times we know at present of only one example, an interesting Hellenistic portrait from Pergamon in Berlin. The Glyptothek possesses also a female portrait of the beginning of the third century with removable wig, in the small head no. 733 (fig. 2, plate VI). A few years ago the French scholar Gauckler attempted to give a profound explanation of this ‘trépanation en effigie,’ his idea being that it owed its origin to a religious ceremony: that when the bust was made, it was desired to consecrate it by pouring holy oil into the hollow under the hair.