Portrait head of a «kosmetes» – Hadrian and Athens

Provenance: Athens, «Diogeneion». Height: 0.32 m. Marble: Pentelic.
Chronology: around the middle of the 3rd century AD. EAM 409

The portrait depicts a mature, bearded man. His hair is arranged in tousled locks running in opposite directions and rendered in high relief. The short beard is worked in extremely low relief, almost engraved. The eyes, deeply sunk in the sockets, intensify the tension of the look. The portrait adopts the style of portraits of the Traianus Decius’ period both iconographically and stylistically. He would wear a himation.