The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 76
J. Safra collection, was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on 18 October 2011 (lot
755a), as part of an incomplete set of the Twelve Caesars. Another two busts from
this series are probably to be identified with those published by Alvar GonzálezPalacios in his seminal Il Gusto dei Principi (1993, II, p. 254, fig. 511). Four busts from
a Twelve Caesars series depicting Nero, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, signed
and dated by Righetti in 1788, were auctioned in Christie’s ‘Exceptional Sale’ on 4
July 2019 (lot 122). They are of the same height as the present Vitellius, and display
a similar treatment of details such as the eyelids, the soft folds of each Emperor’s
cloak, and the carefully delineated locks of hair.
Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus (15–69 ad) was Emperor of Rome for
eight months, during the last year of his life. He had risen to prominence first as
consul and then as proconsular governor of the Empire’s African provinces, from
where in 68 ad Emperor Galba transferred him to lead the imperial troops in
Germania Inferior. Shortly afterwards, on 1 January of 69 ad, the army Vitellius
commanded proclaimed him Emperor, soon followed by the other legions.
Meanwhile in Rome, Galba had been overthrown by Otho, so it was the latter that
Vitellius had to face as he entered Rome with his armies. Once victorious, Vitellius
was hardly given the opportunity to improve the administration of the Empire
– albeit according to Suetonius and Tacitus he showed little inclination to do so –
as before the year was over the Roman troops stationed in the eastern provinces
proclaimed their own commander, the future Vespasian, emperor. After defeating
Vitellius’s allies who had been sent to prevent him from reaching Rome, Vespasian
forced his predecessor to resign his title. Vitellius died in Rome, according to
historians, at the hands of Vespasian’s supporters.
Suetonius describes Vitellius as a man of abnormal height, “with a face usually
flushed from hard drinking, a huge belly, and one thigh crippled from being
struck once by a four-horse chariot”. Coinage from his short-lived empire portrays
him as a middle-aged man with a round face and hooked nose, short hair and a
stout neck, characteristics that in the sixteenth century were soon identified in
a marble bust of man (fig. 1) likely excavated in Rome, on the site of the palace
of the influential Cardinal Domenico Grimani (1461–1523) by the Quirinal Hill.
The Cardinal amassed one of the first and most prominent collections of ancient
statuary of the Renaissance, which upon his death he bequeathed to the city of
Venice, his birthplace. The effigy identified as Vitellius was from the beginning
one of the most admired in the Grimani collection, for its powerful descriptive
quality and for its association with an important figure in the Roman Empire’s
early history.
The sixteenth-century sculptor Gian Battista della Porta executed a copy of
the Grimani Vitellius, complete with paludamentum, which forms part of a Twelve
