Object Description
English, circa 1900, After the Antique
Julius Caesar
Plaster
48 cm. / 19 ins high
This well-modelled plaster is after a marble bust of Julius Caesar in the British Museum (Mus. No. 1818,0110.3), in which the famous military general and statesmen of Rome is shown with his head facing to sinister, wearing a keen expression emphasised by his furrowed brows and tightened cheeks.
The present plaster is presented on an integral socle made out of the same material, with an eighteenth-century style attic-ionic base plate, like the marble. It is close in style and quality to a number of English mid-to-late nineteenth-century casts of the Julius Caesar, many of which come from the workshop of Domenico Brucciani (1814-80), whose firm of plaster modellers operated in London during the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. For an example of a plaster of this subject by Brucciani & Co., see the bust illustrated in their catalogue of 1905 (op. cit.); and for another anonymous ninenteenth-century cast of the same subject which is comparable in style and surface patination, see the bust in the Oxford University Museum (no. ART028).
Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC) was born into a patrician Roman family, the gens Julii, who claimed descent from Julus, son of the legendary Trojan prince Aeneas. Caesar rose up the ranks of the Roman military to become one of its most powerful generals. His victories in the Gallic Wars, which ended in 51 BC, considerably extended Rome’s territory in Western Europe. During this time Caesar both invaded Britain and built a bridge across the Rhine. In 49 BC, Caesar flagrantly defied the Senate’s authority by crossing the Rubicon and marching his army towards Rome. This began a civil war of 49-45 BC in which Caesar was victorious, leading to his appointment as dictator. Whilst launching a series of political and social reforms, he was assassinated by a group of nobles in the Senate House on the Ides of March in 44 BC. Julius Caesar played a crucial role in the events that led to the breakdown of the Roman Republic and the rise of Imperial Rome.