The small bust was considered lost all this time. However, only eight such busts have survived from antiquity.
A small bronze bust, thought to be a portrait of a young man from the 15th century, turns out to be Caligula. The sculpture was found in Herculaneum in the early 18th century, then came to Britain, but after several resales, information about its origin and attribution was lost.
Caligula is considered one of the “bad” Roman emperors. His short reign (37-41) was remembered not only for his tyranny, persecution, squandering of state funds and self-deification, but also for a number of extravagant actions. The emperor staged mock military campaigns, threw money from the roof of one of the basilicas, and brought his horse to the Senate. In the end, he was killed by the Praetorians, the imperial guard.
Emperor Claudius (his uncle), who succeeded Caligula, broke or remade the statues of his nephew (when remade, they were given the features of Augustus or Claudius himself). Therefore, there were few such sculptures. The newly discovered bust is small, about 13 centimeters high; such busts were placed in small sanctuaries. Several similar ones were found in the Tiber, where their owners threw them. In total, eight such busts are known; two in particular are kept in the New York Metropolitan Museum.
The “British Caligula” was discovered during the first excavations at Herculaneum in 1709-1711. In 1767 the bust was bought Horace Walpolean English writer, collector and politician. He valued this small sculpture very much. After the writer’s death in 1797, the bust passed from hand to hand between members of his family until it was eventually sold to another collector. When in the 1890s “Caligula” fell into the hands of the Anglo-German banker John Henry Schroder, it was already being sold as a bust of a young man with the date “15th century”. This banker’s company still exists, as does his collection.
The search for the bust was started ten years ago by Silvia Davoli, curator of the museum at Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s neo-Gothic villa (which, incidentally, was the first building in this architectural style). In his “little castle,” Walpole amassed one of the richest and largest collections of fine art in England. In 1842, one of his descendants sold off almost the entire collection.
A number of tours of the villa were conducted under Walpole, and in 2010, after restoration, it opened to the public as a full-fledged museum. The museum’s curators are gradually restoring the collection; it is almost detective work – tracing the history of purchases and sales of art objects using inventories, catalogues and images.
The Caligula bust was mentioned in Walpole’s correspondence, which revealed the origin of the object. Drawings of the sculpture were found in the Yale University library, which houses the largest collection of the writer’s documents. It later became clear that the bust had eventually ended up in Schroder’s possession, but no documentation of this had survived, and the curators of his collection, as already mentioned, believed that the sculpture dated back to the 15th century, not to Roman times. It was only last year, when a joint exhibition of the two organizations was being prepared, that Davoli discovered the bust in the inventories.
However, she did not limit herself to the external resemblance, but showed the find to specialists. London restorer Rupert Harris confirmed that the composition of the bust’s bronze corresponds to artifacts from two thousand years ago. Dietrich Boschung, a specialist in Roman art from the University of Cologne, confirmed that it depicted Caligula. He also drew attention to the silver inserts in the bust’s eyes – this, according to him, is common for sculptures of emperors.
Now the bust of Caligula will take centre stage at the exhibition in Strawberry Hill.
Based on materials The Guardian and The History Blog
Source: www.nkj.ru
