Caligula Statue : How Accurate?

[guy]

I recently got this image of Caligula from Wikipedia (source of all information--some good and too frequently bad).

 

What's the opinion of this image of Caligula? How accurate, especially with the fair hair and eye coloring?

 

Caligula was not part of the Ahenobarbus [or "red-beard" (literally, "bronze-beard") in Latin] plebeian family of the Domitia gens as was Nero. (Source : Wikipedia)

 

 

Other than this background information, there was no other information:

 

A marble bust of Caligula restored to its original colours. The colours were identified from particles trapped in the marble.

 

Istanbul Archaeological Museum, room 5 - Reconstruction of the original polychromy of a Roman portrait of emperor Caligula (37-41 a.D.). On a loan by the Glyptotek in Munich for the Bunte G

Edited July 1, 2012 by guy

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

The team in Munich has done a lot of research on the theme and, although I've never been to the Glyptothek yet, I think we can say it's about as close to the real thing as the current science allows us to go. It does match in style with other julio-claudian statues' reconstruction (think of the Augustus Prima Porta shown in, amongst other, the Vatican Museum and the Ashmolean of Oxford).

[caldrail]

It's always going to be a bit speculative though, isn't it? If the image was derived from bones as experts seem extraordinarily capable of, I would accept it, but statues are not actually facsimiles in the Roman world but rather icons of a personality cult, sometimes idealised, sometimes simply symbolic and woefully inaccutrate if recognisable as a 'brand'.

[GhostOfClayton]

Even if the statue itself appears exactly as it did 2000 years ago, what's to say the person who painted it had ever laid eyes on the lad himself? I would guess he had a not-too-dark brown hair colour, and the painter just used what he had available that most approximated it. That said, the skin tone is pretty realistic for a limited colour pallette.

[guy]

I would guess he had a not-too-dark brown hair colour, and the painter just used what he had available that most approximated it. That said, the skin tone is pretty realistic for a limited colour pallette.

 

Maybe Malcolm McDowell was the correct actor to play Caligula afterall.

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited July 4, 2012 by guy

[XIIII]

It is terribly difficult to capture likeness in sculpt. Particularly if the subject has a hand in the process and that subject could have you flayed for recreating his cock-eyedness or hairlip.