Skip to content
Virtue & Power

Museum

Museo di Antichità

Holder of the Tusculum portrait — the only surviving likeness of Julius Caesar that may have been carved in his lifetime, and which nobody recognised as Caesar for over a century.

Turin, Italy

Scope

Archaeological collections of the Savoy state, including material from Piedmont and the royal collections at Agliè.

History of the collection

The Tusculum head reached Turin through the collection of the Castello di Agliè, a Savoy royal residence, having been excavated at Tusculum by Lucien Bonaparte in 1825.

Collection notes

The Tusculum portrait was identified as Caesar by Maurizio Borda in 1940 — one hundred and fifteen years after it came out of the ground. Before that it sat in a royal collection as an unidentified Roman head.

Its claim to be contemporary rests on comparison with the denarii struck by Marcus Mettius shortly before the assassination, which are securely dated and securely identified.

Objects in this catalogue