The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 50
roman, 17th century
11
Portrait Head of Emperor Trajan (53–117 ad)
After the Antique
Porphyry
38 cm (15 in.) high
fig. 1
Rome, 2nd century ad,
Bust of Trajan, white marble
Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. MA 1250
This finely carved porphyry head is a portrait of Emperor Trajan, the just ruler
and highly successful conqueror under whom the Roman Empire famously
reached its greatest level of territorial expansion. He governed from 98 ad until
his death in 117 ad and was celebrated by the Senate as “Optimus Princeps”,
‘the best ruler’.
Carved in Rome during the seventeenth century, this head is closely related to
a specific representation of the Emperor which our artist could have accurately
studied from life, in the form of a second-century ad white marble portrait of
Trajan now in the Louvre, Paris (fig. 1) and formerly in the renowned collection
of antiquities of the Albani family in Rome. The same collection held a second
version of this composition, now in the Musei Capitolini, Rome (inv. no. 438).
For influential aristocratic families such as the Albani, the display of vestiges
of ancient Rome’s power, like the effigy of an emperor, was intended to draw a
parallel, and signal a continuation, between the great Roman patricians of the
past and those of the present. This notion is distinctively embodied in the Villa
Borghese, the residence of another prominent Roman family, where the aptly
named Sala degli Imperatori houses the porphyry and alabaster busts of the
Twelve Caesars ( Julius Caesar and Rome’s first eleven emperors). These were
executed in the seventeenth century and, like the present head, would have
functioned both as reminders of the city’s illustrious past and as celebrations of
their present Caesars.
The present portrait’s iconography, depicting the young Emperor as serene and
yet with all the gravitas commanded by his role, was created at the beginning of his
reign, a phase that was welcomed as the end of a period of political insecurity and
strife for the Empire. Indeed, instead of inheriting the Empire, Trajan had been
chosen by Emperor Nerva as his successor for the valour he had displayed as an
army officer, and his rule was characterized by stability and prosperity throughout
the Roman provinces.
related literature
K. de Kersauson, Catalogue des portraits romains, II, Paris, 1996, no. 25, p. 70
