Male Bust

Portrait of an old man restored on a partly ancient bust. The head is under life-size and is turned to the right, showing an old man with a serious meagre and wrinkled face and neck with loose skin. Deep naso-labial grooves run towards the long and narrow mouth, and the upper eyelids are almost fully covered by the heavy orbitals. The hair is gently swept in longer locks at the forehead with a symmetrical curving hairline on the forehead. From above the right eye the front hair locks are arranged in a comma shape. The locks are short and clearly separated at the back. The treatment of the hair with the angular cutting of the locks and the veristic treatment of the facial features are found in many portraits of the Claudian era ( 1st century AD ) but Jane Pjefer observed that the comma shape arrangement is characteristic of the Nero hairstyle, described by the Roman biographer Suetonius as coma in gradus formate and found in Nero's portait the Terme type. There is damage to the forehead and eyebrows, and the nose, chin, mouth , ears and front patch of hair were restored. The man wears a tunica and a paludamentum which dates to the first quarter of the 2nd century AD or even later because of its size and the few linear folds of the drapery.