The artist enjoyed depicting the fresh, youthful characteristics of the sitter. From the 30s of the first century A. D.
21. Fragmentary head of
The emperor Tiberius (14-37)_
The portrait shows the strong family likeness between Tiberius and his mother Livia. End of the first century B. C.
22. The Lansdowne Tiberius
The standard image of the second emperor from the 20s of the first century A. D.
21 The two portraits of Tiberius (born 42 B. C., ruled A. D, 14-37) confirm at first glance his family ties with his mother Livia. It is not just the general structure and proportions of his face, but it is also the way his narrow lips part in a forced little smile, as if trying to overcome, at least in the case of the son, a deeply morose nature. The head represents the emperor at well over fifty years old, about the time (A. D. 4) that Augustus adopted him, confirming his rank as heir apparent. It is a rather standard replica without too much artistic pretension, but it still allows some observations. As the court art of the Empire continued, its neoclassicism became more distant and cold. The proportions and shape of this head mark a step away from the Polykleitan canon whose schema had determined the appearance of Augusts’s portrait types towards Lysippos whose symmetria provided the scaffold for Tiberius’s images. The historian Suetonius reports that Tiberius had such a passion for Lysippos’s famous statue, the Apoxyomenos, that he removed it from public view with the intention of keeping it in his own bedroom. Only after Rome rioted in protest did he return it to public display. One is tempted to make a connection between Tiberius’s personal taste for Lysippos and this change in proportions for imperial portraits.
22 The other portrait of Tiberius was originally of superior quality. Modern cleaning and, alas, recutting have reduced its appeal considerably (fig. 13), but it is still evident that its sculptor was more competent than the craftsman of the first image. Also, the quality of the marble is better. Despite its deteriorated state today, the modeling of the facial volumes and the sensitive carving of the locks of hair show a sure grasp of the chisel. The artist delicately reveals the age of the emperor; he is here manifestly older than in the first example. Tiberius carries his dignity with much less ease than Augustus, and not without some pessimistic ambivalence. He is the princeps. He accepts the paideia of the rejuvenated Greek ideal, but without any elevation of his personal feelings, he appears only more of a loner.
Figure 13. Head of Lansdowne Tiberius as restored in the eighteenth century and attached to an alien statue body for display in Lansdowne House, London. Photo: EA 3054.
23 The identification of this badly mutilated but originally excellent portrait is discussed among archaeologists. Whether Germanicus (15 B. C.-A. D. 19) (as proposed by Patricia Erhart) or one of his sons (as suggested by others), we remain in the same time, the same family, and the same trend. The portrait is a good illustration of the second stage of early imperial classicism; the surface seems to be frozen, the modeling simplified, and the distance from the viewer increased. The first proposal seems to be probable. The close similarity with Tiberius surely has some basis in family ties, but there is more to be said. The historical sources emphasize that the characters of uncle (Tiberius) and nephew (Germanicus) were clearly opposite.
While the actual likeness of our Germanicus is reduced to the level necessary only to recognize the subject, the emphasized similarity with Tiberius assumes a political function. The heir apparent of Tiberius, Germanicus is presented as he performs a religious sacrifice, his head covered with a fold of the toga. He concentrates totally on this act of pietas, an old Roman virtue. His pietas is, however, turned not only towards the gods and Rome but also, with some subtlety, towards Tiberius, his father by adoption, his uncle, and his emperor. The same quality seems to mark other types of Germanicus’s portraits, making clear that this interpretation emanated not from Germanicus himself but was inherent to the imperial propaganda.
It is interesting to compare the photographs of this head today without modern restorations with those of the object before they were removed (fig. 14). The mutilated appearance of the face may be distracting at first glance, but the loss of the disfiguring restorations makes it easier to appreciate the competent craftsmanship of the sculptor.
2 3. Germanicus (15 B. C.-A. D. 19)
The portrait of the adopted son of Tiberius emphasizes the family likeness between them to underline the pietas of Germanicus.
Figure 14. Head of Germanicus with its nineteenth century restorations. Comparison with its current state reveals how disfiguring the added nose and bust really are.
24 This excellent head of the emperor Caligula (37-41) has several peculiarities. The major one is tht style. The workmanship is outstanding, but one perceives some insecurity in it, as if the artist tried to movt the rather cold, late Julio-Claudian version of classicism towards a more animated image and then stoppec halfway. And this may be the explanation: an Asia Minor sculptor abandoned the standard practices of hi: school (like the supporting pillar of stone at the nape) and reproduced a prototype by a court sculptor, bu the baroque, hellenistic local traditions colored the result.
Not many portraits of Caligula survive. This emperor’s initial popularity as the son of Germanicus and sue cesor of the dour Tiberius was short lived. Afterwards, it did not survive the well-deserved damnation of hit memory which was accompanied by the destruction of his monuments. While a comparison with the portrait of Germanicus (no. 23) shows no particular family likeness, it illustrates well the last stage of Julio-Claudian neoclassicism, becoming rigid and even sterile, to be changed under Claudius and still more under Nero (no. 30) when clearly anticlassical elements made the portraits more lively.
World History
