8 This marble head of excellent quality, both as a sculpture and as an image, came to the museum under the name of “Brutus,” the favorite of Caesar who became his murderer. Unfortunately, the name results from wishful thinking. Coin images of the famous assassin shows him with a short beard and features, but without details precise enough to allow comparisons with the sculptural portrait. However, the false name accurately reflects some association with Caesar’s portrait and can provide a starting point from which to understand it. The portrait must date from the Augustan period, still in the first century B. C.
It is superior in carving but drier in style when compared to the McLendon or Bliicher Caesars. The subject appears cultivated and generous, but he seems filled with anxiety and is turned inward towards himself. The comparison to Caesar’s portraits make clear how the brio of the dictator’s representation is not only based on his exterior appearances but on his involvement, his identification with Rome. The focus of our privatus is with himself. But what fine modeling and what sublety is communicated here, making this solitary, melancholy face sympathetic. Is this indeed the man as he appeared to himself? 'We can only imagine. But what we may see is the tired mood of the pax Augusta when the civic ethos was replaced by a strictly private orientation: quotas quisque reliquus qui rem publicam vidisset.
8. Bearded man
In this masterpiece of Augustan classicism, the private character of the portrait practically eliminates the civic ethos proper to a Roman aristocrat. Late first century B. C.
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