Portrait Head of a Philosopher (Second half of the 2nd century): Artwork and History

Portrait Head of a Philosopher (Second half of the 2nd century) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Roman.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The Roman emperor Hadrian (r. A.D. 117–38), who embraced Greek intellectual pursuits, popularized the beard among men young and old, who had previously been clean-shaven. The beard quickly became a fashionable style as well as a sign of one’s interest in classical learning, leading elite Roman men to have themselves portrayed in the guise of philosophers. This portrait of an unidentified man, who wears a full beard and a hairstyle of wavy locks over his forehead, resembles portraits of the Greek philosopher Plato. The introspective eyes, with their heavy lids and drilled pupils, also contribute to the sitter’s intellectual demeanor.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait Head of a Philosopher
• Date: Second half of the 2nd century
• Artist attribution: Roman
• Place of origin: Roman Empire
• Medium: Marble
• Dimensions: 33 × 19.1 × 22.9 cm (13 × 7 1/2 × 9 in.)
• Type: Sculpture
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1923.49

Collection credit

A. A. Sprague Fund

View the original

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.