Return to a Fascinating Face
I decided to find out more information about the Roman Emperor Caracalla of the fascinating intense stare. I looked on the artstor site through the library (http://library.artstor.org.exp.lib.cwu.edu/library/) and found several images of him in sculpture and on coins. With his furrowed brow and habitual scowl he is recognizable in every medium I saw, which surprised me a little. I think that Roman verism is the reason his image transfers so well- we see the same features without too much artistic license being taken. He doesn’t look like just any emperor- he looks like Caracalla. The other sculptures I studied are in the Louvre and in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and they look enough alike to be the same work shown from different angles. They may even be copies of each other. Caracalla’s hair is slightly longer in these statues and curly and his beard is more evident than in the picture in our book, his head is turned somewhat to the side and he wears the cloak that was the source of his name fastened at his shoulder by a round clasp. It may be the way the bust depicted in our book was lit that made Caracalla appear older or maybe the style of verism really exaggerated the lines in his face. With the slightly longer, curly hairstyle in the other busts I saw he does seem a little younger (more like the Greek ideal) but no softer. His face on coins is usually in profile but still shows the furrowed brow, short, curly hair and strong jaw of the sculptures. Unlike in this country, the ruler in power was the one to be pictured on the coins during his reign, much like in Great Britain today. Coins were also made to commemorate military victories, coronations and other events that were important to the state.
This emperor’s birth-name was Lucius Septimius Bassianus, born in 188 the son of the Emperor Septimius Severus. He was the darling of the Roman army and his soldiers gave him the nickname “Caracalla” after the Gallic-style cloak he wore. A caul is a covering even in the English Language and in Latin calleo means to have a thick skin or in other words to be callous. In 198 his father crowned him co-emperor and he was re-named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus after the conqueror he sought to emulate. He was said to “possess the savagery of Caligula and the paranoia of Nero”. I can’t imagine that he would be fun to be around. His father did actually did conquer in Parthia (Iran and Iraq) a decade and a half earlier and Caracalla was on his way into the Fertile Crescent area to do battle there when he was executed by a Praetorian Prefect, Macrinus, who feared that his master was becoming too powerful. At this time the army tended to decide who would lead the empire by killing their old leader and replacing him with another one of their choosing, especially when the current ruler seemed to be becoming too mentally unstable. Since he was murdered in 217 he was only 29 years old at the time of his death, which is not the age of an old man. He had been living as a soldier from the time he was big enough to lift a sword though, and this shows in his face.*
*The information about Caracalla in this paragraph is from an article in Expedition, or more formally, Darbyshire, Gareth, Harl, Kenneth W., and Goldman, Andrew L. “To the Victory of Caracalla: New Roman Altars at Gordion.” Expedition 51-2 (2009) 31-38.
Really nice post! Caracalla is an interesting individual, both in terms of artistic representations and historical information.
ReplyDeleteI had friends in graduate school who thought that Caracalla was really attractive (they liked the stubble on his chin that shows up in many of his portraits). Whenever they would chat about Caracalla, I would laugh and remind them that "looks aren't everything." I don't think murderers are attractive (especially a murderer who kills his brother in front of their mother)!
-Prof. Bowen