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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Trebellianus, post: 3560923, member: 91569&quot;]I believe (someone please step in if I&#039;m incorrect) there&#039;s no credible portrait of Vitellius outside of the coins. </p><p><br /></p><p>The &quot;Grimani Vitellius&quot; (currently in the Archaeological Museum in Venice) was long regarded as an authentic ancient sculpture of the guy:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]946769[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]946770[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>This bust was supposedly dug up by Cardinal Grimani in Rome in 1505, and was identified with Vitellius almost immediately (certainly by 1531).</p><p><br /></p><p>Unfortunately educated opinion today is that this isn&#039;t Vitellius. The bust has been dated on artistic grounds to the Antonine era, although a minority opinion regards it as an outright 16th Century forgery.</p><p><br /></p><p>The famous bust residing in the Louvre (used by e.g. Wikipedia) is regarded by the Louvre as a modern production: a &quot;<a href="http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not&amp;idNotice=28628" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not&amp;idNotice=28628" rel="nofollow">free imitation of an antique bust from the Grimani collection in Venice</a>.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]946760[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>And all the other nice-looking Vitellius heads are copies of the Grimani Vitellius or the Louvre one, as I understand.</p><p><br /></p><p>I borrow this information mainly from <i>the J. Paul Getty Museum Journal: Volume 5, 1977</i>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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