This over life-size fragment may have been part of a seated statue of the emperor made during the reign of his step-son and successor, Tiberius. Over two hundred and fifty portraits of Augustus, including numerous full-length statues, are known today. In antiquity, there were probably as many bronze statues of the emperor as there were marble ones, but relatively few of the former have survived. Augustus himself claimed to have removed eighty silver statues that had been set up in his honor in the city of Rome alone. Although Augustus’ features are individualized, he is represented in an idealized, ageless way. When he died in A.D. 14, he was seventy-seven years old, but no portraits of him in old age are known.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Marble portrait of the emperor Augustus
Period:Early Imperial, Julio-Claudian
Date:ca. 14–37 CE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Marble
Dimensions:12in. (30.5cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1907
Object Number:07.286.115
[Until 1907, collection of Edward P. Warren, Lewes House, Sussex, UK]; acquired in 1907, purchased from E.P. Warren.
Robinson, Edward. 1908. "New Accessions in the Classical Department: I. Marbles." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3(1): p. 7.
Robinson, David Moore. 1926. "Two New Heads of Augustus." American Journal of Archaeology, 30(2): p. 127, fig. 1.
Montini, Italo. 1938. Il ritratto di Augusto. no. 66
, pp. 59, 90, Rome: C. Colombo.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Christine Alexander. 1939. Augustan Art: An Exhibition Commemorating the Bimillennium of the Birth of Augustus. p. 6, New York: Marchbanks Press.
Poulsen, Frederik. 1939. Römische Privatporträts und Prinzenbildnisse, Vol. 2, pt. 5. no. 7
, p. 24, Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1940. "A Rearrangement of Roman Portraits." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 35(10): p. 201.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1941. Roman Portraits, Vol. 1. no. 9, p. 2, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1948. Roman Portraits, 2nd edn. no. 18, p. ii, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hausmann, Ulrich. 1981. "Zur Typologie und Ideologie des Augustusporträts." Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, Pt. 2, Principat, Künste, Vol. 12, H. Temporini and W. Haase, eds. p. 589 n. 286, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.
Hertel, Ernst Dieter. 1982. "Untersuchungen zu Stil und Chronologie des Kaiser- und Prinzenporträts von Augustus bis Claudius. Ph.D. diss.." Ph.D. Diss. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1987. Greece and Rome. no. 72, pp. 11, 99, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Boschung, Dietrich. 1993. Die Bildnisse des Augustus. pp. 42 nn. 134, 139, 43 n. 143, 44, 85 n. 409, 100 n. 496, 166–67 no. 140, pl. 109, Berlin: Gebr. Mann.
Bartman, Elizabeth and Cambridge University Press. 1999. Portraits of Livia: Imaging the Imperial Woman in Augustan Rome. p. 29 n. 7, Cambridge.
Milleker, Elizabeth J. 2000. The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West no. 13, pp. 33, 205, New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 383, pp. 332, 481, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Picón, Carlos A. and Seán Hemingway. 2016. Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World no. 259, p. 308, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zanker, Paul. 2016. Roman Portraits: Sculptures in Stone and Bronze in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 16, pp. 11, 57, 66–67, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. p. 304, New York: Scala Publishers.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2020. ART = Discovering Infinite Connections in Art History. pp. 072, 287, New York: Phaidon Press.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
