Portrait Bust of a Man

The realistic features of this fine life-sized portrait include wrinkles in the forehead and beside each eye, and very naturalistic ears, protruding but not quite symmetrical. The stylized hair is neatly arranged and suggests a date in the Augustan period, although some scholars have seen it as late Republican. Likely once topping a shaft as a herm bust, the portrait’s subject—now unknown—would have been identified by an inscription.