Half-face statue in the British Museum

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels: this half-head of a statue on display in the British Museum. Link

[#1 posted by Mr BabyMan , January 13, 2008 1:59 AM]

Is that Anthony Half-Head?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[#2 posted by PookJP , January 13, 2008 8:14 AM]

Meh.

[#3 posted by gladeye , January 13, 2008 9:01 AM]

Is that Julius Caeser? (seriously)

[#4 posted by William Joseph Dunn , January 13, 2008 10:06 AM]

Not shown and off camera, a display of the Statue of Liberty's arm sticking out of the sand...."YOU BLEW IT UP...YOU MAD MEN!"

[#5 posted by pedmands , January 13, 2008 10:14 AM]

Why not just post the artist and name of piece, too?

[#6 posted by Cory Doctorow , January 13, 2008 11:03 AM]

Pedmands: Because both were lost to antiquity millennia ago? Yeesh.

[#7 posted by Takuan , January 13, 2008 11:22 AM]

a little Shelley?

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[#8 posted by JG , January 13, 2008 11:53 AM]

Ywn, y nd pctr dtr.

[#9 posted by Jerry Kindall , January 13, 2008 12:34 PM]

How big is it? It's hard to tell.

[#10 posted by magna_maxima , January 13, 2008 12:40 PM]

Cory, portrait busts from antiquity are ID'ed more often than you'd believe. I'm more of a philologist than a girl with a specialty in material culture, but from the lips of this guy, I'd wager it's Nero or one of his Ahenobarbus relatives.

[#11 posted by Santa's Knee , January 13, 2008 2:39 PM]

@#10: It looks more like Patrick McGoohan to me... ;)

[#12 posted by JG , January 13, 2008 4:05 PM]

well, so much accepting input, eh?

[#13 posted by saresponda , January 13, 2008 4:38 PM]

it's a bust of JC (the earlier one) (artist unknown)

[#14 posted by magna_maxima , January 13, 2008 5:42 PM]

@Saresponda, have you got a British Museum catalog number for it? I'd be interested to know of the provenance, etc., if you think it's Caesar.

[#15 posted by ill lich , January 13, 2008 6:22 PM]

Reminds me of that Matisse statue where he decided when he was near completion that it looked better without the arms (a la Venus de Milo)-- or maybe I just like the look of 1/2 destroyed sculpture, sometimes they look improved, like they've been given a whole new meaning.

[#16 posted by Boba Fett Diop , January 14, 2008 8:01 AM]

Based on the upper lip, it could just as easily be Augustus:

http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/ule/statue02.jpg

http://www.myoops.org/twocw/mit/Literature/21L-455Fall2004/CourseHome/index.htm

I'd usually expect Nero to be shown with a beard, but looking now there seem to be as many examples without as with.

[#17 posted by saresponda , January 14, 2008 8:32 AM]

@ Magna Maxima (go Latin-derived user names!) I don't know the catalog # for it - I just know that I took almost the exact same pic as Cory.

The bust was found in the temple of Athena Polias in Priene, according to:

http://www.livius.org/a/turkey/priene/priene.html

[#18 posted by Takuan , January 14, 2008 8:42 AM]

so Claudius commissioned it?

[#19 posted by magna_maxima , January 14, 2008 6:04 PM]

@Saresponda, thanks! What a weird coincidence, as I uploaded for my BoingBoing user account icon a resized photo I took of some extant columns at Priene two years ago.