Vatican Museums

The rare relics of ancient bronze statuary exhibited in the Antiquarium Romanum of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum include this famous bronze head portrait of a bearded man, with a furrowed brow and laurel crown. It has been identified hypothetically, on the basis of coin portraits, as the emperor Trebonianus Gallus, who governed only between 251 and 253 A.D., during one of the most troubled periods in the history of the Roman Empire. Indeed, the third century A.D. saw, following the fall of the Severus dynasty and before the reign of Diocletian, a rapid and unstable succession of several emperors. The hollow cast bronze was produced using the lost wax technique, and prior to its entry into the Vatican it belonged to the Mattei Collection. It underwent restoration in 1776 and 1780 by the silversmith Giovanni Meres, who carried out work on the laurel crown.