Portrait said to be of Lycurgus
Early II century.Not on display
This poorly preserved Roman copy of a Greek original from around 290 b.c.e. belongs to a rather irregular group of five Roman copies of a scupture baselessly identified with Lycurgus of Sparta. It presents an older man with a thick beard and relatively long hair whose ends were sculpted to face inward on the sides and back. His amiable expression is the result of damage to the brows and does not correspond to the Greek original. This copy in Madrid appears to date from the beginning of the Antonine dynasty but the model is not easily dated. While the contours of the head and the facial expression suggest the preexistence of a portrait of Socrates from around 330 b.c.e.; the hair, which recalls the portrait of Euripides (E00080), and the representation of the area around the eyes suggest that it dates from around the beginning of the third century. We can only speculate as to the identity of this Greek who, judging from the number of copies, must still have been famous in Roman times.
