Who was Cleopatra? Supplementing ancient art works with later representations, an exhibition now at the Field Museum in Chicago explores the interpenetration of Greek and Egyptian styles—and the conflicting propaganda efforts by Cleopatra and her enemies in Rome that created the dualistic persona of history's most alluring queen

Art in America, Feb, 2002 by Sheldon Nodelman

Despite the damage--chiefly to the nose--and considerable wear to its surface, the work's effect is mesmerizing. The face seems younger than that of the Berlin portrait by several years. It is fuller and more rounded, richer in dynamic contrasts and in suggestions of movement and feeling, as opposed to the latter's cool, chaste modeling and reserved expression. The head is turned very slightly to its right, the gaze directed just as slightly downward. The mouth is full and pouting, blending intimations of sensuality and adolescent willfulness, unlike the primly compressed lips of the Berlin head. Slight asymmetries contribute to the mobility of the features and the consequent implications of mood and of an attentiveness seemingly inflected by awareness of the viewer. The throbbing energy and dramatic pathos of earlier Hellenistic art are still active here, however restrained and nuanced. The young queen's intense allure, which intrigued even so jaded a connoisseur as Julius Caesar and would later entangle the less consummately sophisticated Antony, emanates palpably from this radiant image.

Caesar, Cleopatra's paramour and mentor, is purportedly represented by one of the exhibition's most arresting--and at the same time most problematic--works of art. This is the Berlin "Green Head," acquired by Frederick the Great in 1767. Everything about this masterpiece is the subject of dispute, from its genuineness--might it not be a bravura 18th-century exercise all'antico rather than a true ancient sculpture?--to its identity: is it in fact a portrait of Caesar? Doubts as to the former have now largely subsided; they were raised in the first place because of the piece's stylistic anomalies, hard to parallel in recognized works of Greek and Roman sculpture. Extreme refinement in execution and finish are combined with a certain edgy linearity of detail and lack of underlying coherence of organic structure which seem alien to the principles of Classical sculpture. But these are less troubling if a somewhat different origin is envisaged. The rare green basanite from which the work is cut was unique to Egypt in the ancient world, and it was Egyptian sculptors who had developed the technique required for the working of this extremely hard material. The mannerisms largely responsible for the Berlin bust's stylistic strangeness are best paralleled in late Egyptian sculpture, especially in the extraordinary works of "realistic" portraiture whose relationship to allied tendencies in Greek and Roman portrait sculpture has been the subject of much debate. As a work of Egyptian material and technique approximating only partially to the stylistic conventions of Classical art, the Green Head is far more credible.

But is it a portrait of Caesar? This too is a tricky question, for the piece conforms to neither of the dictator's well-established portrait types--neither the more harshly "realistic" Aglie type dated to the latter years of Caesar's life nor the posthumously rejuvenated Campo Santo type, probably created on the occasion of his deification in 42 B.C. Instead it seems uniquely to combine elements of each. On the other hand, contemporaries commonly affected in their own portraits the stylistic devices and conventions of self-display featured in images of the dictator--the Metropolitan Museum's Sabouroff head in this exhibition is an example--and the two are not infrequently confused. What seems incontestable is the date, for the shape of the bust segment is common in works of the first half of the first century A.D., situating the Berlin piece from half to a full century after the dictator's death. The bust thus may--for legitimate doubts linger--be an Egyptian-made work, a posthumous and highly idiosyncratic evocation, private rather than official, of the late dictator. Whatever the truth, it is an extraordinary work of sculpture, exquisitely carved, whose nervous intensity of modeling and startling immediacy of expression--to which the inlaid eyes contribute greatly (17)--exceed anything else in the exhibition.