Marble Portrait of a Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2007

Marble portrait of a man
Roman, Late Republican or Early Augustan period, late 1st century BC.

Accession # 21.88.14

This head with its broad forehead, narrow chin, and long scrawny neck is so similar to portraits of Julius Caesar as he appears on coins and in sculpture that, in the past, it was identified as that famous general and politician. Perhaps the man who is the actual subject of the portrait wished to accentuate this resemblance because he sympathized with the dictatorship of Caesar or with the cause of his party, the populares.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.