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拍品专文
This magnificent bronze portrays the subject in heroic nudity, with a lean, attenuated body, and youthful musculature. He stands in contrapposto, his weight on the straight left leg, the right bent with the foot turned out. The right arm is lowered and extends outward, and the left is bent acutely at his side; both hands once held now-missing attributes. His head is turned to the right, and his long oval face features a pointed chin, slightly parted fleshy lips, a straight nose, and heavy-lidded eyes that gaze downward. His long wild locks radiate from the crown of his head, bound in a diadem, and fall in thick corkscrew curls along the sides of his face and over his shoulders.
The subject of this bronze modelled himself after Alexander the Great. In both style and stance, this figure relates to the depiction of Alexander at the Harvard University Art Museum, a later Roman copy after a Greek original by Lysippos (inv. no. 1956.20; see no. 38 in N. Yalouris, et al., The Search for Alexander). It is likely that this prince, like the Harvard example, held a spear or a lance, a feature that underscored his military prowess and reinforced associations with Alexander’s conquests.
Towards the end of the Hellenistic period, a new, more exaggerated and baroque style of portraiture took hold amongst Alexander’s successors, as can be observed on this bronze. As R.R.R. Smith writes (p. 24 in Hellenistic Sculpture), “It is a style which employs longer curling hair and has a wild, youthful, more overtly charismatic aspect. This was an upgraded, more intensified, or more ‘Hellenistic’ royal image. As Hellenistic monarchy lost power, royal portraits sought to emphasize its ideal qualities. This late royal style was self-consciously the aesthetic and ideological opposite of the harsh, realistic-looking portrait style favored by the leaders of the Roman Republic, the chief enemy of the kings.”
Based on comparison to portraits on coins, particularly in reference to the distinctive unruly locks, this figure has previously been identified as Mithradates VI Eupator (r. 120-63 B.C.) or his son, Ariarathes IX Eusebes Philopator (r. ca. 101-87 B.C.), two of the Roman Republic’s most formidable opponents (for a brief description of the life of Mithradates VI, see M. Bieber, Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, pp. 121-122; for their coin portraits, see figs. 1929 and 1944 in G.M.A. Richter, Portraits of the Greeks, vol. III). However, the lack of secure contemporaneous sculptural depictions of either makes precise identification difficult, and other rulers likewise employed similar imagery for their own ends. For example, the Quaestor Aesillas, a Roman magistrate who administered the Province of Macedonia circa 95–70 B.C., issued a silver tetradrachm bearing a distinctive portrait head of Alexander with features not unlike those on the present bronze (see no. 1542 in E.S.G. Robinson and R.C. Lockett, Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, vol. III, The Lockett Collection, pt. 3).
A similar marble head with long tresses and an ovular face discovered on the Athenian Acropolis further illustrates the complications with identifying the subject of late Hellenistic portraits (see no. 215 in C.A. Picón and S. Hemingway, Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World). This portrait, thought to represent Mithradates VI, Ariarathes IX, Ariarathes V Eusebes Philopator, or Eumenes II, incorporates “features that are both divine (Dionysian) and royal (in the mode of Alexander the Great), and with a close resemblance to coin portraiture.” It has been suggested that the present bronze may also combine the features of a youthful deity with that of a late Hellenistic ruler in a merger that sought to project power and legitimacy in the last decades of the Hellenistic world against the rise of Roman hegemony across the Mediterranean.
The subject of this bronze modelled himself after Alexander the Great. In both style and stance, this figure relates to the depiction of Alexander at the Harvard University Art Museum, a later Roman copy after a Greek original by Lysippos (inv. no. 1956.20; see no. 38 in N. Yalouris, et al., The Search for Alexander). It is likely that this prince, like the Harvard example, held a spear or a lance, a feature that underscored his military prowess and reinforced associations with Alexander’s conquests.
Towards the end of the Hellenistic period, a new, more exaggerated and baroque style of portraiture took hold amongst Alexander’s successors, as can be observed on this bronze. As R.R.R. Smith writes (p. 24 in Hellenistic Sculpture), “It is a style which employs longer curling hair and has a wild, youthful, more overtly charismatic aspect. This was an upgraded, more intensified, or more ‘Hellenistic’ royal image. As Hellenistic monarchy lost power, royal portraits sought to emphasize its ideal qualities. This late royal style was self-consciously the aesthetic and ideological opposite of the harsh, realistic-looking portrait style favored by the leaders of the Roman Republic, the chief enemy of the kings.”
Based on comparison to portraits on coins, particularly in reference to the distinctive unruly locks, this figure has previously been identified as Mithradates VI Eupator (r. 120-63 B.C.) or his son, Ariarathes IX Eusebes Philopator (r. ca. 101-87 B.C.), two of the Roman Republic’s most formidable opponents (for a brief description of the life of Mithradates VI, see M. Bieber, Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, pp. 121-122; for their coin portraits, see figs. 1929 and 1944 in G.M.A. Richter, Portraits of the Greeks, vol. III). However, the lack of secure contemporaneous sculptural depictions of either makes precise identification difficult, and other rulers likewise employed similar imagery for their own ends. For example, the Quaestor Aesillas, a Roman magistrate who administered the Province of Macedonia circa 95–70 B.C., issued a silver tetradrachm bearing a distinctive portrait head of Alexander with features not unlike those on the present bronze (see no. 1542 in E.S.G. Robinson and R.C. Lockett, Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, vol. III, The Lockett Collection, pt. 3).
A similar marble head with long tresses and an ovular face discovered on the Athenian Acropolis further illustrates the complications with identifying the subject of late Hellenistic portraits (see no. 215 in C.A. Picón and S. Hemingway, Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World). This portrait, thought to represent Mithradates VI, Ariarathes IX, Ariarathes V Eusebes Philopator, or Eumenes II, incorporates “features that are both divine (Dionysian) and royal (in the mode of Alexander the Great), and with a close resemblance to coin portraiture.” It has been suggested that the present bronze may also combine the features of a youthful deity with that of a late Hellenistic ruler in a merger that sought to project power and legitimacy in the last decades of the Hellenistic world against the rise of Roman hegemony across the Mediterranean.