Bronze Portrait Bust of a Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 2007

Bronze portrait bust of a man
Roman, ca. 50 BC- AD 54
Said to be from Trastevere, Rome

Accession # 14.40.696

For the Romans, bronze was the material par excellence for honorific portraits of important individuals and was valued for its ability for it to produce the closest possible fidelity to nature. While the identity of this man is unknown today, the very high quality of this portrait, with its sensitively modeled features and expensive inlaid eyes of ivory, signifies his prominence in ancient Roman society.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.