1Thanks to a kind communication of Dr. Dé Steures from Leiden , we were informed that the small Museum Paul Tétar in Delft (The Netherlands) is in possession of a marble head dating to the third century A.D. and hitherto unnoticed in any archaeological publication[1]. Rather than being famous for antiquities and Roman history, the town of Delft is much more known as the city of Johannes Vermeer, the place where the first Dutch stadtholder, William of Orange, called the Taciturn, was murdered in 1584, and where the Orange stadtholders and royals have held their mausoleum in the Grote Kerk.

2Paul Tétar van Elven (1823–1896) was a wealthy painter and collector of art who bequeathed his house cum collection to the municipality of Delft and stood at the origins of this very nice museum at Koornmarkt, in the centre of the old town, finalized in 1926, after the death of his second wife, and opened to the public in 1927. The house can be seen as an excellent example of a traditional elite mansion of the seventeenth and later centuries[2]. Its collection mainly consists of Tétar’s own work (both originals and copies of well-known masterpieces from Italy and Holland), paintings by old masters and Tétar’s colleagues furniture, and objets d’art, mostly Dutch and, as to ceramics, Chinese import ware[3]. This collection was partly enriched by the board of the foundation in the late 1920s. The Roman head, presented here for the first time, is an exception as is one more Roman antique object within the collection, a small soldier’s head belonging to a Roman relief.

3Delft, Museum Paul Tétar van Elven, inv. 0482 (Fig. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6).

Dimensions: Slightly over life-size; height 31 cm (neck-head), chin-crown 27 cm, chin-hairline 19 cm; width 20 cm; depth 22.5 cm.

Material: White compact marble with bluish and blackish veins and barely showing crystals. Probably marble from Dokimeion.

Condition: Surface covered with crust of lime and dirt. Damages: blemish in hair at front left; chin, nose, eyebrows, ears chipped; philtrum and eyes damaged. Lips and cheeks complete. Obliquely broken off under neck. Bottom covered with whitish mortar and original surface invisible. Set into a mortar slab hollowed out and covered with a brass sheet.

Provenance: The provenance of the head is unknown. It might have been purchased by Tétar or by the board that gestured the house after 1926, but according to the director, the piece forms part of the collection since long. No archive material is at disposal to confirm one of these suggestions. Tétar and his second wife made a one-year trip in the 1880s to Egypt, Greece, and Italy during which the head and the relief could have been acquired[4].

Description: The piece represents the head of a young man turned slightly to his right, with roundish and protruding cheeks. No traces of movement or original dress have been preserved. Eyebrows are likewise protruding and running in one line over the bridge above the nose. The mouth is well carved, with slightly protruding, closed lips. The chin is round and has no indent. The moustache is thin and curly, typical of first beard growing, and executed with tiny chisel strokes. The man’s eyes are set deep in their sockets, with the lower lids going over in the cheeks. The upper lids are heavily accentuated and arched, which could indicate that the head was meant to be seen from a low standing position. Iris and pupil are drilled and set against upper lid. Drill holes indicate the inner corners of the eyes. A horizontal indent marks the high front. The hair is rendered in low relief and cropped short a penna. It has been combed to the front from the crown. A partition of hair is visible above the left eye. It has been combed to the sides above the ears. Crown and back are roughly worked, so that barely no hair details result visible, which corresponds to our theory that the portrait was meant to be seen from below. In the nape, the hair cap ends in a V-shaped point, sharply set off from the nape. The well-proportioned ears are cut out moderately, and show an indent at the upper side of their outline. Inside, the ears appear to have been worked out naturally. Whiskers, rendered in soft and shallow relief, run down in wavy strands until the lower side of chin, where they finish in harsh chisel strokes.

4The portrait is that of a young man in his teenage years with short-cropped hair. The style of the portrait reminds of the emperors of the first half of the third century A.D. Possible candidates that come to mind are Elagabalus (r. 218–222), Severus Alexander (r. 222–235), Gordian III (r. 238–244), and Philip II (r. 247–249), son of Philip the Arab (r. 244–249), in particular. The coiffure of our portrait consists of short locks of hair combed to the right side until they are met by strands of hair arranged in opposite direction above the right eye. This arrangement thereby creates the impression of an almost horizontal line of hair across the forehead, a characteristic feature of the imperial portraits of the third century and the Tetrarchy. The arrangement of locks of hair on the forehead comes closest to that of Severus Alexander and Philip II. Of the four emperors mentioned above, all but Philip II, who died aged twelve, are known to have presented themselves with a thin moustache and sideburns.

5Even though the shape and hairstyle of the Delft head correspond to known replicas of Philip II’s portrait type (Fig. 7)[5], we believe that the presence of facial hair rules out an identification with the son of Philip the Arab, as it would have required the sculptor to add these features without clear incentive from the imperial center[6]. This leaves us with three possible imperial candidates, of which we may dismiss Gordian III for the lack of the emperor’s characteristic double vertical indent above the nose and his receding hairline around the temples (Fig. 8)[7]. With regard to Elagabalus, the preserved evidence shows that the moustache and sideburns only appear in his second portrait type[8]. Since the Delft head lacks the elaborate hairstyle and middle parting of this second type, we may exclude Elagabalus as a possible candidate. Since we have also been unable to locate clear traces of re-carving, it is improbable that the Delft head represented Elagabalus in a first configuration[9].

6This reasoning leaves us with the following conclusion. The portrait corresponds closest to the main portrait type of emperor Severus Alexander, particularly with regard to the arrangement of hair. Surviving portraits of Severus Alexander adhere to one main portrait type, although it should be acknowledged that replicas of this type show a large variety in execution as they portray the young emperor transitioning from a boy into a young adult. The replica that comes closest to our portrait from Delft is a portrait head that is now preserved in the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo , which is listed under »Gruppe C« in Fittschen and Zanker’s seminal catalogue of Roman portraits (Fig. 9)[10]. Similarities between the portraits include their shape and execution on the level of the facial hair, ears, and lips in particular. Another characteristic trait that both portraits share is the V-shaped hair cap in the nape, which is a recurrent feature in the portraits of Severus Alexander[11]. Characteristic features of portraits of Group C also include the whiskers and thin moustache, which are both present in our portrait from Delft. The portraits of the different subgroups can be dated by their first appearance on coins[12]. Portraits of Severus Alexander that adhere to the iconography of Group C appear for the first time on coins from the year 225 A.D.[13], thereby providing us with an approximate date for the production of the portraits from Oslo and Delft.

7The style of Severus Alexander’s portrait can be seen as following some of the trends set out under Caracalla (r. 198–217 A.D., as sole ruler: 211–217 A.D.). Whereas Septimius Severus (r. 193–211 A.D.) still presented himself with a curly hairdo and a long beard in order to align himself with his Antonine predecessors[14], his son and successor Caracalla preferred a shorter haircut and beard. Less attention was payed to the hairstyle of the emperor, resulting in a simple a penna execution of the hairdo[15]. Severus Alexander took this representational strategy one step further by only introducing some facial hair in his otherwise consistent portrait type during the course of his almost thirteen years of rule. Alexander apparently stuck to the accepted novel norm of representation, possibly to avoid a connection to his cousin and predecessor Elagabalus, who experimented with a longer hairdo in his second portrait type. To retain a shorter hairdo also meant to uphold an aesthetic link to the portraiture of Caracalla, to whom Alexander traced back his lineage[16].

8The identification of the portrait head from Delft as Severus Alexander means that there are now 31 preserved portraits of Alexander known to us[17]. This number corresponds to 2.4 portraits per annum of his reign, which is overall quite low considering the average of 4.3 under the Severans in general[18]. A possible reason for this lower number may be the destruction of Alexander’s images under the rule of his successor Maximinus Thrax (r. 235–238 A.D.). Though we have no evidence of any official sanctions directed towards Alexander’ images, our evidence suggests some spontaneous acts of violence occurred nevertheless[19]. The relative low number of preserved portraits of Alexander also stands at the brink of a general decline in the number of imperial portraits, which has been seen as a reflection of the political turmoil and economic decline of the third century A.D.[20]. When looking at the number of statue bases per annum, however, there is little evidence of a significant drop in statue dedications in the third century[21]. The relatively low number of preserved portraits of Severus Alexander, therefore, does not necessarily reflect a change in statue habit; rather, they seem to be more indicative of the overall chances of survival of portraiture as opposed to statue bases in this era.

9Although the provenance of the head remains unknown, we may assume that this portrait represents Severus Alexander and forms a replica of his official portrait type. The sideburns and moustache of the portrait have furthermore allowed us to date the portrait post 225 A.D. It constitutes a fine addition to the rather small number of portraits known of this emperor.

An as yet unpublished ancient marble head from the Paul Tétar collection in Delft (NL) can be interpreted as a portrait of Emperor Severus Alexander (222–235 A.D.). The provenance of the piece is unknown. On the basis of the bearded cheeks and moustache as well as other criteria the portrait must be classified in ›Group C‹ of the official portrait type of the emperor and dated to c. 225 A.D. Thus 31 portraits of the emperor are known in total.