ITALIAN, PROBABLY ROME, 17TH CENTURY | BUST OF AN ANTONINE PRINCE

Coloured marble portrait busts have adorned the residences of royalty and connoisseurs since the 16th century. Produced in the finest workshops in the rarest and most precious hardstones, these exotic materials demonstrated both their owner's taste and their extensive travels.

This sumptuous bust represents a young Roman Imperial prince. With its abundant, vigorously carved locks of hair, large ears and boyish features, the head follows the so-called Borghese type portrait of an Antonine prince, who has been tentatively identified as M. Galerius Aurelius Antoninus, a son of Antoninus Pius. See the bronze statue in the Galleria Borghese, Rome (inv. no. 829).