Purchase.
Italian marble.
Italian, ca. 1800.
London, British Museum.
H 14 in.
Metropolitan Catalogue: Cast no. 965.
Cast Location: Robinson B359 hallway

Thin hair combed forwards to cover his balding head, Julius Caesar's gaunt face and incised pupils give him a forceful presence and a commanding gaze. Since the Renaissance, Julius Caesar has held a powerful, yet controversial, fascination in western culture. Could Rome’s Republican government have withstood its internal political crises had Caesar not destroyed it? Or was the Republic in its death throes and was it only his seizure of control that assured Rome’s survival and opened the way for empire? Shakespeare portrayed Caesar as driven by personal ambition. Classical biographers were ambivalent, Suetonius highlighting his faults and virtues, and Plutarch focusing more on his courage and nobility.

The head typifies the traditional view of Caesar as resolute, courageous, and noble—the visionary founder of Rome as Empire. The British Museum purchased the head in 1818 from James Millingen, an English collector of antiquities. The head was said to have been discovered in Alexandria, but he had found it in Rome. It became one of the museum’s most prized and well-known classical Roman portraits. For more than a century reproductions, drawings, and photographs of the bust found their way into museums, private collections, and art books. (Its picture may still be seen on the Tufts University Perseus webpage for Julius Caesar.)

Skepticism over the bust’s origins began to surface in the 1890s when Adolf Furtwängler, a leading classical archaeologist, expressed doubts that the work was an authentic classical Roman bust. Nonetheless, the British Museum’s 1904 catalogue on classical sculpture, while noting Furtwängler’s reservations, maintained that the head was original. After all, Caesar’s hair was combed to the front, a device which Suetonius reported to have been adopted by Caesar when his baldness became an object of ridicule. The catalogue further stated that Caesar’s eyes were strongly marked. That observation should have caused hesitation since Roman marble sculpture did not show an incised iris or pupil until the time of the emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138).

The 1928 museum catalogue, again noting that some critics had doubts, confirmed it to be a genuine Roman bust of Caesar of ‘the falcon eyes’ (Dante, Inferno, IV, 123), ‘the consummate soldier, statesman, and man of letters.’ By 1953, the museum had accepted the inevitable. The head was unceremoniously moved from the Roman galleries and placed at the entrance to the museum’s reading room. What then of its origins? In 1960, the classical art historian Gilbert Bagnani called it a great piece of the Italian Renaissance. After a thorough examination, the Oxford classicist Bernard Ashmole concluded that it had been made about 1800, with the damage to the nose artificially caused by a nail-studded piece of wood or some other means of abrasion.

One expert has stated that the sculptor of the head may have borrowed features from a large statue of Caesar on Rome's Capitoline Hill and from a bust acquired by Pope Clement XIV for the Vatican in 1771. It might be said that this head of Caesar symbolized a traditional view of classical Rome’s empire and leadership which nineteenth-century England linked to a vision of its own imperial destiny. By the mid twentieth century, that vision was gone, and it was time for the demise of the head’s pedigree and its removal to the reading room.

- Bill Pierce


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See Gilbert Bagnani, "On Fakes and Forgeries," Phoenix XIV, 4 (Winter, 1960), 228-244; Otto Kurz, Fakes (New York, 1967); Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic: Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cicero: Six Lives, trans. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth, 1972); Jeffrey Spier, "Blinded with Science: The Abuse of Science in the Detection of False Antiquities," The Burlington Magazine, CXXXII, 1050. (Sept., 1990), 623-631; Sepp Schüller, Forgers, Dealers, Experts: Strange Chapters in the History of Art (New York, 1960); A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum (London, 1904), vol. III, no. 1870, p. 146, pl. XIII; Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (New York, 1989); Henry Beauchamp Walters, A Guide to the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, 6th ed (London, 1928).]]> Plaster original.
Incised on top of neck: "Gordon Ross/19 years old/cast from life/1938."
H 23 in.
Not in Metropolitan cast catalogue.
Long-term loan.
Cast Location: Robinson B359 hallway

This physically fit male torso, from the neck to below the navel, arms only to the upper biceps, was cast from life. Notwithstanding the inscription, nothing is known about Gordon Ross or the mold-maker. In keeping with traditional practices, his body may have been used as an "ideal" male form for teaching purposes.

The process of casting from life has a long history as an art form. Florentine painter Cennino Cennini (c. 1370-1440) wrote a handbook for artists in 1400. The sections on making casts from life give a good sense of the concerns. Noting particularly the model's social status, the materials used, and the methods, the section entitled "How to Take a Life Mask" reads "If you wish to have a face of a man or woman, of any rank, adopt this method. Get the young man or woman, or an old man, though you can hardly do the beard or hair, but have the beard shaved off. Take rose-scented, perfumed oil, anoint the face with a good-sized minever brush."

Then Cennini describes the method of winding bandages around the head and other preparations, followed by instructions for making breathing tubes of brass or silver. In the midst of explaining how to apply the plaster, he reminds the reader thus: "And bear in mind that if this person whom you are casting is very important, as in the case of lords, kings, popes, emperors, you mix this plaster with tepid rose water; and for other people, any tepid spring or well or river water is good enough." In order to "Make a Cast of Your Own Person," the reader must first have the plaster prepared, then "have it spread out on a good broad table, such as a dining table. Have in placed on the ground; have this plaster or clay spread out on it a foot deep. Fling yourself on it, on whichever side you wish, front or back or side. And if this plaster or clay takes you well, get yourself pulled out of it neatly, pulling yourself out straight, so as not to shift it in any direction."

Then the same must be done to the opposite side of the body, before a worker joins the two halves together and casts the whole in lead or another metal. Today's methods have greatly increased the comfort-level of the model. Making a life cast now involves spreading a coat of petroleum jelly on the model's body, thicker in the armpit and pubic areas, followed by a coat of dental alginate (a stabilizer) with the consistency of yoghurt. "When dry, the Alginate is very rubbery requiring a support shell, or 'mother'mold." Plaster-coated cloth bandages are applied over the area to be cast and removed after they have set. "At this stage the mold is held tightly against the skin by a vacuum. One must slip a hand around the edges to break the seal. The cast should then pop off. The entire modeling time is about 45 minutes.

Gone is the need for repeated efforts should the model happen to fling himself into the plaster crookedly! Modern methods are relatively easy and uneventful, but from the evidence of body hair on the inside of our cast, the method used by our model did not benefit from alginate, though the flinging was probably eliminated.

~Ellen McV. Layman



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See ArtMolds Sculpture Studio LLC, http://www.artmolds.com/gateway/technique/example.htm. Life-Casting.com "Creating a Torso Mold" 1998-2001; Cennino Cennini. The Craftsman's Handbook, trans. and ed. Daniel V. Thompson Jr. NY: Dover, 1954, p. 91, after Cennino Cennini, Il Libre dell'Arte, Milan, 1890 ed., Section 14.]]> Parian marble.
Ca. 456 BCE.
Olympia, Museum.
Metropolitan Catalogue: Cast numbers 468 and 469.

The first Olympic games were held at Olympia, supposedly in 776 BCE, and every four years thereafter until pagan celebrations were banned by the Roman emperor Theodosius in 391 CE. The temple of Zeus, built in the fifth century BCE, was the major building in the sanctuary, known as the Altis. The huge temple of Zeus is in the center of the sanctuary, and the gold and ivory statue of Zeus that it housed was one of the seven wonders of the world. The temple itself was constructed of plastered limestone, its sculptures of white marble from the Aegean island of Paros. The sculptures from the west pediment (gable) of the temple illustrate the Centauromachy, the war between the Greeks and their neighbors the centaurs, a mythical race said to be half man and half horse. The occasion was the wedding of King Perithoos, grandson of Zeus and king of the Lapiths. He invited the centaurs, who had too much to drink and began attacking the women and boys at the party. The sculptures in the east pediment (gable) of the temple illustrate the chariot race between Pelops and Oenomaus. Pelops was the suitor of Hippodamia, daughter of king Oenomaus, who did not approve of Pelops, and challenged him to a chariot race, as he had done with all previous suitors of his daughter. When he won those races, Oenomaus killed the suitor. Pelops defeated Oenomaus by replacing the linch-pins holding the wheels on the chariot of Oenomaus with wax: after the race, he killed the father of the bride. According to one story, that race was the founding event of the ancient Olympic Games.


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See Bernard Ashmole and Nicholas Yalouris, Olympia. The Sculptures of the Temple of Zeus (London, 1967), figs. H and I, pls. 110-117 (2);fig. N, pls. 31-40 (3); fig. E, pls. 41-43, and fig. B pls. 50-52 (4); and fig. L, pls. 58-61, and fig. N pls. 31-38 (5)]]> Ashmole and Yalouris figs. H and I.
H 36 in., W 52 in., D 20 in.
Metropolitan Catalogue: Cast no. 469.
Cast Location: DeLaskey Bldg- front hall

In this group, a centaur attacks a Greek woman who attempts to fight him off. The centaur is intended to look barbaric: he has disheveled hair and beard and a vicious expression. The face of the Lapith woman, however, is smooth and untroubled by expression of any sort, as if to show that the Greeks are above all this barbarity.

~Nathan Barber


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See Bernard Ashmole and Nicholas Yalouris, Olympia. The Sculptures of the Temple of Zeus (London, 1967), figs. H and I, pls. 110-117.]]>