A Marble Portrait Head of the Young Caracalla as Crown Prince , Roman Imperial, Reign of Septimius Severus, circa A.D. 197-198

turned to his right, the eyes with engraved irises and drilled pupils, his unruly hair radiating from the crown and falling in thick voluted curls over the forehead.

the artist Henri Gonse (1874-1946), Paris, first half of the 20th century
Madame Charles Laroche, 5 Place de Wagram, Paris, circa 1956
French private collection, acquired in the 1980s

"Le cabinet de l'amateur," Musée de l'Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris, February-April, 1956

Orangerie des Tuileries, Le cabinet de l'amateur. Organisé par la Société des amis du Louvre en souvenir de Monsieur A.-S. Henraux son Président 1932-1953, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Éditions des Musées nationaux, 1956, no. 162 (as "Geta, frère de Caracalla."), unillustrated but recorded in exhibition photographs preserved in the Archives des Musée Nationaux.

Very good and as shown in the catalogue. Tip of nose chipped and an abrasion to the left of the chin. Proper left earlobe chipped. Minor chips elsewhere. Surface somewhat weathered, especially on the crown and back of the head.
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The present portrait of Caracalla is to be added to the corpus of more than 40 known heads of this type (see K. Fittschen - P. Zanker, Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen under anderen Kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom. Band 1: Kaiser- und Prinzenbildnisse, Mainz am Rhein, 1985, no. 86, pp. 98f.).