Imagines virorum illustrium. Problemi di identificazione dei ritratti greci

Interest in Greek portraits in modern times started relatively early, in the 16th century, as a consequence of the humanist movement with its penchant for the study of Classical Antiquity. It was only natural for scholars to try to find among the ancient monuments that were coming to light, especially in Rome and its vicinity, representations of the famous Greeks familiar to them from Classical literature. The most conspicuous among these representations are marble herms or busts of the Roman period, which are more or less faithful copies of the heads of Greek portrait statues. The first scholar who developed the quest for Greek portraits into systematic study was Fulvio Orsini, who established criteria for reliable identification of the portrayals of famous Greeks. First and foremost among these criteria was the evidence of an inscribed name. This principle remains valid today, as has been emphatically reaffirmed by G.M.A. Richter, the author of the most recent comprehensive publication of Greek portraits. Yet there are good reasons to believe that the ancient inscriptions accompanying copies of Greek portraits are not always reliable as means of identification. This is true of portraits in paintings and mosaics, which, as has long been recognised, are very often given names with no authority whatsoever. More significantly, several herms with sculpted portraits of famous Greeks can also be shown to have already been inscribed with false names in Antiquity. It appears that the sculptors of the Imperial period did not hesitate to provide their clients with portraits bearing false identification whenever a genuine prototype did not exist or was not readily accessible to them to copy. The need is therefore evident to develop criteria to distinguish the authentic from the falsely identified Greek portraits.