Head of a Man

c. 40 BCE · Sculpture

Can I see it?

Not on view at present

Where is “Head of a Man” now? Collection: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.

Harvard Art Museums

Cambridge, United States

It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.

Checked: 12 days ago
In this state since: Sep 27, 2026
Source: The museum

On the map Museum page

About the sculpture

Head of a Man from the End of the Roman Republic

The head was partly restored in post-Classical times, receiving a new outer nose (now missing) and ends of the ears (also gone). The neck was worked for insertion in a bust.

There are a number of portraits in marble and volcanic Italian stone, of much finer quality than this example, that show the genesis of this type of face in the period of the Second Triumvirate (Schweitzer, 1948, pp. 126-127, figs. 192-196).

Read on

A head on an alien Antonine bust, the ensemble from the Villa Celimontana (Mattei) in Rome, shows how these portraits relate to the head of Julius Caesar of the type in the Camposanto, Pisa (Righetti, 1981, pp. 12-14, no. I, 11). Another head, with pupils expressed and possibly late Hellenistic rather than Flavian or Hadrianic, is the Greek Imperial counterpart of the Harvard portrait, borrowing its Italic physiognomy for the wider eastern Mediterranean world (Huskinson, 1975, p. 35, no. 65, pl. 26). Vagn Poulsen discussed portraits of this urban and suburban Roman type in connection with the head found after World War I in the Hudson River near the old Lackawanna Ferry slips (23rd Street) and now in the Milles collection in Stockholm and in connection with a head in Copenhagen.

The man in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (no. 565), has the same form of face and, if he were the same person, he is shown in an older portrait of greater quality in carving. Moreover, he seems to smile rather than to set his lips into a grimace, as does the man in the Harvard collection (Poulsen, V., 1973, I, p. 56, no. 23, pl. XXXV).

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Harvard Art Museums