portrait head
- Museum number
- 1805,0703.244
- Description
-
Marble portrait of a Greek mounted on a modern bust. Parts of the face have been restored and much of the surface has been re-touched. Unidentified subject.
- Production date
- AD 1 - 160
- Dimensions
-
Height: 53.34 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Roman version of an original of about 200BC.
-
Cook 2011, nr. 346:
Bust of an elderly man with a receding hair-line and a full beard. Formerly mounted on a yellow marble base inscribed Ηρακλιτε (Townley Register, Ellis).
Once identified as Aratus (Ellis), but as Newton and Smith commented, ‘on no sufficient grounds’. The statement that it was found in 1770 at Murena or ‘near Albano’ (Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, Ellis, Guide) is incorrect, as Smith pointed out, being derived from confusion with 1805,0703.92.
(A number of objects not included in the 1804 Parlour Catalogue (1804 Parlour Catalogue) were recorded by Combe in a Supplementary List. One copy was sent to John Towneley (TY 18/4), another is in the British Museum Townley Archive (TY 18/4). The list was used in the compilation of the original Townley Register in 1848. Some descriptions are so laconic that the objects remain unidentified.)
Date:
elderly man, Roman, after original ca. 200 BC (museum label).
Bibliography:
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808), VI.45;
- Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, XI, pl. 21;
- A Guide to the Graeco-Roman Sculptures in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 2 vols. (London, 1874 [1892] and 1876), I, no. 67;
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 139-40, no. 1847.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1805
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.244