Featured White Papers
- Enterprise PBX buyer's guide (VoIP-News)
- Hosted CRM buyer's guide (Inside CRM)
- Don't miss this enterprise mobility Webcast! (TechRepublic)
Content provided in partnership with
Dietrich Boschung
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 1999 by John Poluni
In categorizing portraits that are identifiable as Augustus on the basis of hairstyle and, to a lesser extent, facial features, Boschung seeks ultimately to determine the appearance of the model for a particular type. Portraits that are of high quality, reflect the style of the city of Rome, and show a great degree of correspondence among themselves are considered to constitute replicas of a presumed lost model (Urbild) or, for Boschung, a lost design (Entwurf). Those few portraits that show the closest affinity to one another constitute Boschung's Kerngruppe (core group); others that show substantial affinity with one another form the remaining "replica series." The concept of a Kerngruppe works fairly well, but where to make a division between the Kerngruppe and the remaining less close versions of the type can be very subjective, as is also the matter of establishing what constitutes the best one or two examples within a Kerngruppe of the presumed lost original model. Within a given replica series there m ay be portraits that show an affinity among themselves but deviate from the core group in various ways. Such a group of portraits Boschung calls a Repliken-strang (replica string). Portraits that are of essentially the same portrait type but differ significantly from the core group could be regarded as Varianten (variants). Whether considered part of a replica string or a variant, some portraits appear to combine elements of more than one type and so constitute Klitterungen or Typenklitterungen (contaminations). The reasons for these deviations among the surviving portraits are varied and can only he postulated. Some portraits do not fit into any established type and should be considered independent creations. In his terminology, Boschung uses Kopie (copy) and Replik (replica) interchangeably, although others, from Georg Lippold on, [13] have attempted to differentiate between the two. Some distinction should at least be made between a replica (that which shows strong affinities with others of the same type) and a version (that which does not show strong affinities with a core group and can be considered an adaptation, variant, or new creation).
The first of the portrait types of Octavian/Augustus to be discussed (pp. 11-22, 59-65) is the so-called Actium or Octavian type, renamed by Boschung the Alcudia type after a head in Alcudia (Mallorca; Fig. 3). He sees four replicas (pp. 11-13) representing the Kerngruppe (cat. no. 6, pls. 7, 8; cat. no. 10, pl. 9; cat. no. 31, pl. 10; cat. no. 32, pl. 11), with another twenty-four also reflecting this type to a lesser degree. Boschung's analysis here illustrates one of the inherent problems of such typological studies, which make comparisons among extant heads as a means of reconstructing the lost prototype: namely, the self-limiting evidence of the portraits themselves and the quality and available angle of photographic views of each head. For example, within Boschung's Kerngruppe of the Alcudia type (pp. 10-13), the head in Alcudia is capite velatus (head veiled); only the top half of the Zurich head is preserved, and it is very weathered; and there are no strict profile views or back of the head shots fo r the Uffizi and Tripoli heads. Like Paul Zanker and Klaus Fittschen, [14] Boschung (pp. 52, 60-61) pushes the creation of this type (although not of the Alcudia head itself) back to at least 40 B.C.E. His dating is based largely on the coin evidence of Octavian's so-called DIVOS IVLIVS emission (pl. 238.2-3; Fig. 10, which might date anytime between about 40 and 38 B.C.E. (p. 60 n. 244). [15] Boschung agrees (p. 60 and n. 247) with those who see the Alcudia type as also reflected in later numismatic images on the so-called triumphal series (pl. 238.4-7).
