Augustus Bevilacqua

In AD 9, in the forests of Germania, three Roman legions under the general Quinctilius Varus were wiped out. The biographer Suetonius writes that when the news reached Rome, Augustus let his hair and beard grow for months and now and then struck his head against a door, crying out, Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions. He was over 70 by then.

The museum dates this head to around AD 10, the last years of his life, and points out that it shows no trace of age or strain. The face is calm and smooth, the hair laid in orderly locks. It goes back to the official portrait created in January 27 BC, when the Senate gave Octavian the name Augustus, and copied again and again, even after his death. About 150 versions survive, and the museum counts this one as the finest.

He wears a wreath of oak leaves, the civic crown, the Roman award for saving the life of a fellow citizen, which the Senate voted him in that same year. The head is named after the Bevilacqua family of Verona, whose collection Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria bought in 1811.