Portrait of Galba
This bust shows the characteristics commonly associated with Servius Sulpicius Galba (r. 68-69): his bald head, the shallow wrinkles on his forehead, the deep furrows next to his nose and mouth and the pronounced philtrum. The name of the sculptor of this work is not known; yet it is evident that the artist used descriptions of ancient sources – in particular Suetonius – depictions on coins, and the studies of scholas and antiquarians to reconstruct the physiognomy of emperor, of whom no known sculptural portraits were extant during the period of its execution. The bust forms part of a series of 16 works in porphyry and alabaster, which were displayed in Palazzo Borghese until roughly 1830 and have been documented in Villa Pinciana beginning since 1832.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
porphyry and oriental alabaster
Dimensions
Provenance
Included in decoration of the Gallery of Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio between 1674 and 1676 (H. Hibbard, ‘Palazzo Borghese Studies. II, the Galleria’, The Burlington Magazine, 104 (1962), pp. 9-20); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese, 1833, C, p. 49, no. 111; purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1995/1996 C.B.C. Coop. a.r.l.
Commentary
This bust depicts Servius Sulpicius Galba, the emperor who came to the throne in the wake of Nero’s death and was killed after several months in 69. He is portrayed frontally, wearing the paludamentum, which is buttoned by a round fibula on his right shoulder. Beneath we see a cuirass and a garment with short sleeves. His head is bald, while his forehead shows shallow wrinkles. His ruffled eyebrows express worry and resignation. We further note that his eyes are not perfectly symmetrical and are positioned toward the outer part of his head. His well defined mouth is framed by deep furrows around his nose and lips and a profound philtrum. Tense tendons form grooves in his neck and highlight his Adam’s apple.
Galba was 72 years old when he ascended to the imperial throne. According to Suetonius, he was bald with a hooked nose and blue eyes (Twelve Caesars, VII, 21). Beyond referring to the few descriptive passages from literary sources, the sculptor had to rely on coins to reconstruct his appearance, given that no ancient portrait that with certainty depicts Galva has come down to us (Felletti Maj 1960, pp. 757-8). The unknown artist of the bust must have looked at the various texts published during the 16th century in the endeavour to reproduce the appearances of eminent men of the past: an evident similarity in fact exists between the work in question and Galba’s face in the Effigies viginti quatuor Romanorum imperatorum (plate VII), which has been variously attributed to Fulvio Orsini or Onofrio Panvinio.
The work forms part of a series of 16 busts in porphyry from Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio: they reproduce the Twelve Caesars narrated by Suetonius, with the addition of Nerva and Trajan and second versions of Vitellius and Titus. They were formerly placed in recesses in the gallery and framed by an arrangement of plaster reliefs depicting key episodes in the life of each and personifications of their respective virtues; this decoration was executed by Cosimo Fancelli between 1674 and 1676 (Hibbard 1962). The busts remained here until roughly 1830 (Nibby, p. 360): two years later, they are documented as forming part of the display of Room 4 of Villa Pinciana (Nibby 1832, p. 96). To the series was now added a second bust of Vespasian, sculpted by Tommaso Fedeli in 1619, which had been in the Gladiator Room.
According to documents from the Borghese Archive, the series was composed, as we have seen, of the ‘Twelve Caesars’, with the addition of Nerva and Trajan as well as second versions of Vitellius and Titus (Vatican Secret Archive, AB, b. 5688, no. 15, published in Hibbard 1962, appendix, doc. I, pp. 19-20). In 1830 Nibby saw the series when it was still in Campo Marzio, describing the works as ‘16 busts with heads in porphyry, representing the 12 Caesars and 4 consuls’. Two years later, when they had been moved to Villa Pinciana and displayed along the wall of Room 4, he listed them as Trajan, Galba, Claudius, Otho, Vespasian (two exemplars) Scipio Africanus, Agrippa, Augustus, Vitellius (two exemplars), Titus, Nero, Cicero, Domitian, Vespasian, Caligula and Tiberius; this catalogue was confirmed by the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario.
Yet if this description (which includes a second Vespasian, executed by Tommaso Fedeli in 1619 and transferred from the Gladiator Room) corresponds to the current state of the series, we are left with several uncertainties: to begin with, we must ask what happened to the busts of Caesar, Titus and Nerva, which were present in 1674-76 but do not form part of the series today; secondly, we must wonder who the fourth consul referred to by Nibby in 1830 could be, given that currently only three are represented (Agrippa, Cicero and Scipio Africanus); and finally, we must inquire where the busts of the consuls came from. It is therefore possible that the sculptures displayed in the gallery, which were already present in Palazzo Borghese, did not correspond to those envisioned for the iconographic programme of the vault: this discrepancy may have indeed complicated the identification of the portraits. This theory is supported by the common date of execution of the busts, which critics believe were all sculpted in the same period during the 17th century (Faldi 1954, pp. 16-17; Della Pergola, 1974; Moreno, C. Stefani, 2000, p. 129; Del Bufalo 2018, p. 116).
Sonja Felici
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