dons_life's Journal

Emperors on the Market

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2017/07/emperors-on-the-market.html

One of the fun things about working on modern images of Roman emperors is that there are such a lot of them about, and for sale. Just this last week a rather splendid (vulgar?) set of four came up at Sotheby's. They were probably rightly said to be very like the sixteenth-century versions of Della Porta and interesting partly because these sets of busts only really get off the ground a bit later than this.

Tipped off by a friend, I did go to Sotheby's to have a real look. And two things struck me apart from the price (half a million for four emperors, rather beyond me).

First, these are emperors done before the iconography has become clearly standardized. The pic at the op does match up a bit to the standard Julius Caesar, but I wasnt certain that I detected a classic Marcus Aurelius here (as the catalogue suggested). I have always liked the 'porosity' of these Caesars and this looks like a good case. Who is who?

But second I was struck by a bit of the cheap skate construction. The busts are at firat sight made out of the most lavish coloured marble.

But as you can see from this pic, the construction is basically a few strips of marble on a rough plaster base. They were a nice showy construction in other words, but in the end without much bottom (apart from the glorious faces).

Anyway, no half a million to spare at this end -- rare, nice and cheap skate as they are.