The marble sculpture known as The Head of a Man in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is dated from the 1st century
CE and is attributed to Roman civilization
(www.arthistory.ucsb.edu/classes/class6A). It is my thesis that the sculpture is a Roman copy of a Greek original, which was probably made of bronze and painted (Boardman 174). It is not a portrait of a once living individual, but perfectly fits the Classical Greek notion of "the idealised mortal who is near divine, self-sufficient and above ordinary passions" (Boardman 148).
No intense emotions or individualized physical features are to be found in this work of art, a tendency evident in the work of Lysippus about 325 BCE, whose naturalism was favored in the more realistic portraits produced by the Romans. Therefore it is logical to assume that the prototype of this work was clearly Greek, and probably Classical, since the anatomy and technique show the influence of the amazing mastery achieved by Phidias and others near the time of Pericles in the middle of the 5th century BCE.
The conquest of the technical problems of representing the anatomically correct human form were perfected by Phidias and Polyclitus of Argos, among others, marking a break with the stiffer poses of the earlier Archaic approach to human representation. Although few if any of their works can be verified beyond a doubt because most were not signed, the numerous references to their work in the literature of the time, and the elegance and grace of the far more numerous later copies purported to be based on their pieces give us a clear idea of the greatness of their artistic achievement. This Classical style was notable for its idealized realism รป realistic in its depiction of the appearance of the body, but idealized in the sense that few if any human beings can match the perfection of beauty in limb and face represented by these works.
Polykleitos' Doryphoros (the spear-bearer) dates from a...