Caracalla was emperor from 211 to 217, the son of Septimius Severus. He is noted for extending Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire, though this may have been to extract more tax revenue to pay for his extravagances. Some biographers, notably Edward Gibbon, have represented him as unstable and brutal.
This portrait is unusual for the tense facial expression and the turn of the head, which are in contrast to the refined portraits of the Antonine emperors who preceded Caracalla. It also marks the return to fashion of close-cut beard and hair. These early decades of the third century CE were the last major flourishing of Roman portrait sculpture
Naples, National Museum 979
Transferred from the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1884
Vessberg: Romersk Portratkonst, 59
Ruesch: Guide to the National Museum, Naples, 235-6
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 116, no.616 (?)
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 895, no.538
From the Farnese collection
