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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 8126007, member: 110350&quot;]I wish I did -- five minutes of googling yielded nothing quite like it.&nbsp; I wish the museum of archaeology in Sousse, Tunisia had a website with its collection online, but it doesn&#039;t. There are almost 100 photos from that museum available from Getty, but just about every one is of the extremely famous Roman mosaics (very much worth looking at, by the way -- they&#039;re amazing).</p><p><br /></p><p>However, regardless of whether I can find other examples, I have no doubt whatsoever about the bust&#039;s authenticity, given how reputable the dealer is, given the lengthy and extremely specific provenance (it&#039;s quite rare to find an artifact on the market with a provenance dating back more than 100 years to a particular town, in North Africa or elsewhere -- Dumas&#039; descendants waited a very long time to sell his collection of Roman and Carthaginian antiquities), and given everything about its appearance being completely consistent with an ancient terracotta molded figure. It&#039;s also much more finely rendered than some of the crude, supposedly ancient, pottery figures one sees for sale on Ebay, etc. Whoever sculpted the original clay model from which the molds were made was quite talented, I think! I do wonder what the sculptor used for a model, though, given how closely the hairstyle follows the details of one of Faustina II&#039;s hairstyles, even in back where one wouldn&#039;t necessarily see it on a coin. Although I suppose it would have been possible to extrapolate from a profile view.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, although terracotta heads and figurines are usually associated less with the Romans than with the Etruscans and with the Hellenistic Greek world (not only in Boeotia, where Tanagra is located, but all around the Mediterranean), I do know that terracotta was still widely used in Roman Egypt and elsewhere in Roman North Africa, up through the first few centuries AD. After all, most of the Roman terracotta/pottery oil lamps one sees come from North Africa.&nbsp; And it&#039;s not at all difficult to find small terracotta figurines manufactured in Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD. See these three examples currently available from Ostracon Ancient Art, all with a provenance dating back to their publication in 1921: <a href="https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1436667/Egyptian-Lantern-holder-Slave-Boy-Published-1921-2nd-1st-Century-BC;" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1436667/Egyptian-Lantern-holder-Slave-Boy-Published-1921-2nd-1st-Century-BC;" rel="nofollow">https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1436667/Egyptian-Lantern-holder-Slave-Boy-Published-1921-2nd-1st-Century-BC;</a> <a href="https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1442916/Tragic-Actor-in-Role-Athena-Published-1921-1st-2nd-Century-AD;" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1442916/Tragic-Actor-in-Role-Athena-Published-1921-1st-2nd-Century-AD;" rel="nofollow">https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1442916/Tragic-Actor-in-Role-Athena-Published-1921-1st-2nd-Century-AD;</a> and <a href="https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1418294/Egyptian-Boys-Little-Dog-Published-1921-200-225-AD" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1418294/Egyptian-Boys-Little-Dog-Published-1921-200-225-AD" rel="nofollow">https://www.trocadero.com/stores/Ostracon/items/1418294/Egyptian-Boys-Little-Dog-Published-1921-200-225-AD</a>. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m thinking of posting a link to this thread in the ancient artifacts group at io, to ask if any of the experts there know of any similar terracotta portrait busts of Roman emperors or empresses, or even just ladies with hairstyles imitating the empress.&nbsp; Such a bust would certainly have been useful to every hairdresser in the provinces!</p><p><br /></p><p>Finally, I&#039;m very glad that this portrait bust does exist in terracotta: it wasn&#039;t cheap, but anything similar in bronze or marble would have cost at least 10x or 20x what I paid -- in other words, far beyond my means![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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