Roman copy of a bronze original.
This portrait of the fifth century BCE Greek writer of tragedies captures his alleged morose character, with its long untidy hair over his ears, deep eyes and downcast expression. He only found moderate success in his own lifetime, but had a memorial erected to him in Athens at his death.
This is one of a group of about thirty similar portraits of Euripides. They can be identified thanks to his name (missing from this cast) inscribed on the original of this particular one
Naples, National Museum 1122
Purchased in 1884 from the Paris Beaux Arts (?)
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 215 (n.3), pl. 77.2
Hekler: Greek and Roman Portraits, x, pl. 10
Bernoulli: Griechische Ikonographie (1901) I, 151, pl. XVII
Ruesch: Guide to the National Museum, Naples, 266, no.1122
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 115, no.600
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 895, no.554 (?)
Richter: The Portraits of the Greeks, 121, & pl.82
From the Farnese collection
