Republican Portrait of a Bald Man in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, October 2009

Portrait of a bald man
Roman, Late Republican Period, about 60–30 B.C.

Dimensions: Height x length (of face): 33 x 25 cm (13 x 9 13/16 in.)

Medium or Technique: Marble, from Dokimeion in Phrygia (modern Turkey)

Classification: Sculpture

Catalogue Raisonné: Sculpture in Stone (MFA), no. 321; Sculpture in Stone and Bronze (MFA), p. 114 (additional published references).

Accession Number: 99.343

The over-life sized portrait presents an old man either completely bald or with his head closely shaven. The surface was left slightly rough at the back of the skull, indicating a draped statue set in a niche or against a wall. Unsparing naturalism has been used for all individual details, the ugly outline of the skull, the furrowed forehead, the swelling beneath the eyes, and the loose flesh hanging in folds and creases about mouth and jaw.

The man has not ...been identified.

Palombino, a hard volcanic stone, was used in Rome chiefly at the end of the Republican period.

Little of the neck is preserved. Most of the nose is missing; the ears, chin, temples, and right cheekbone have been damaged.

Text from: www.mfa.org/collections/object/portrait-of-a-bald-man-151317