Cuirassed Statue of a Roman General

In 1930 the Glyptothek turned 100, and to mark the year it bought a marble portrait head found at Tusculum, the ancient town in the hills above Frascati, south-east of Rome. For a long time that head sat on this armoured statue, which had also come from Frascati, and the two were treated as one work. In the archaeological literature the figure was even published as Mark Antony.

The museum has since taken them apart. It now says the head, a man of around 50 BC turning sharply to his left, never belonged to this body, and it lists the head on its own. The statue stands headless again, and with the head the old name has gone too.

Scholars place the statue itself in the late Republic, the last century before Augustus. The man wears a cuirass over a tunic, with the paludamentum, the cloak of a Roman commander, thrown over it. His hands and feet are lost as well.