Portrait Bust of an Aristocratic Man (280–90 CE): Art, History and Details

Portrait Bust of an Aristocratic Man (280–90 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

These three pairs of marble portrait busts depict an aristocratic Roman couple. They are unique in representing the same couple three times with only minor variations in costume. Allegedly found together with the Jonah Marbles, they may represent the Christian patrons who commissioned the Jonah cycle.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait Bust of an Aristocratic Man
• Date: 280–90 CE
• Culture: Anatolia, late Roman-early Christian
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble
• Dimensions: Overall: 35.2 x 21.5 x 12 cm (13 7/8 x 8 7/16 x 4 3/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Early Christian
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1965.245

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• McColl, Donald Alexander. Early Christian Sculptures at Cleveland in Their Eastern Mediterranean Context. 1991.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), Margaret English Frazer, and Kurt Weitzmann. Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art Third to Seventh Century. New York: The Museum, 1977.
• Kitzinger, Ernst. 1978. "The Cleveland Marbles". I Monumenti Cristiani Preconstantiniani. 653-675.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.