Die Büste eines Afrikaners aus der Sammlung Piranesi in Stockholm

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Die Büste eines Afrikaners aus der Sammlung Piranesi in Stockholm

By Carmen Marcks

Abstract

A portrait bust of an African placed among the antiquities in the Royal Museum at Stockholm once belonged to the Roman artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. It was brought to Sweden at the end of the 18th century at the instance of King Gustav III. The head is a work of the middle or second half of the 16th century. It belongs to a specific, local, Roman form of Mannerist portraits, which have in common a remarkable affinity to antique imperial portrait busts. While the head is an eclectic work combining an idealized countenance—a contemporary peculiarity of portrait art—with antique usages of portrayal, the bust itself seems to be a work that stands directly in the tradition of cinquecentesque Venetian busts. Obviously head and bust were not originally created as an ensemble.

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Bibliographical information

Carmen Marcks, ‘Die Büste eines Afrikaners aus der Sammlung Piranesi in Stockholm’, Opuscula. Annual of the Swedish Institutes at Athens and Rome (OpAthRom) 1, 167–178. Stockholm 2008. ISSN: 2000-0898. ISBN: 978-91-977798-0-7. Softcover, 198 pages. https://doi.org/10.30549/opathrom-01-13