What did emperors think of their portraits on coins?

Yea it does kook a bit like a wig on that sculpture.

 

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@Ancient Aussie, did you get a picture of Titus as well? I frequently mistake him for Vespasian, especially if the portrait is fairly worn.

 

No unfortunately, but I reckon he looks somewhere in between Vespasian and Domitian.

 

All of this begs the question of how accurate any 'marble sculpture' or coin portrait actually was to the living man.

'Portraits' varied from the 'warts and all' to the generalized and cartoonish....but the issue of 'balding' seems to be the typical common denominator that caused each enormous discomfit....somehow I can easily appreciate that LOL

 

And of course, identifying which bust goes with what emperor can be a highly dubious task. Mary Beard gave a fantastic talk about the subject.

 

Hi Aussie,
Great idea to photograph those marble busts when you visited Rome. I'd be willing to believe that they are fairly accurate likenesses of those emporers. You're right! They do look like the images on the coins!

 

I always assumed that Nerva's nose was broken later in life.

 

There are a number of factors you may need to keep in mind when visiting the subject of Imperial portraits. First, the sort of perfect copying we take for granted virtually didn't exist, except for small, insignificant items like lamps or tiny, cheap plaster or terra cotta busts of popular people, gods or personifications sold in stalls at the market for display at home which were cast in molds - even those were painted by hand so there would have been some variation even there.
As for the coins, although they strove for some sort of "verite", they were the product of many different artists with differing levels of skill and talent - as well as having varying degrees of access to the best portraits and varying degrees of Imperial input or impediment.
Also the emperor was only occasionally in a situation to "sit to a sculptor", even if not out on some border fighting some interminable war, at least the more conscientious of them had a pretty full schedule as the ruler of an enormous empire.
So, when the emperor was at his leisure to sit for a top sculptor of the sort who would be retained for the Imperial court, he probably had a LOT of input into the portrait that resulted - possibly positive - possibly meddling. We know some folks are a lot more concerned with their looks and how they're seen than others, so there was at least a chance that the portraiture of the more devoted emperors was probably as close as artistic skill could render.
The original skilled and talented sculptor could only create so many copies of the same work, the vast majority of busts and coin portraits were then, copies of copies (of copies...etc.)
Obviously the creators of dies for Provincial coins did not have the same expectations of realism or level of skill - one wonders how many steps removed from a "realistic" portrait the prototypes from which many of them may have been working actually may have been.
The point is that there were a lot of factors which might have affected how accurate the portraits were, from technical limitations, to artistic talent and Imperial interest/interference. It's probably a good idea to try to blend all those varying portraits in your mind when envisioning what the emperors really looked like.

 

Yeah the flavians a instantly recognisable.

 

What is that mark on Domitian's face? If it is a deliberate defacing of the coin, it may be an example of a popular "damnatio memoriae", a damaging of an emperor's image as a form of protest. Caligula's coinage shows this insult on occasion and since Domitian was feared for his aberrant cruelty, like Caligula, it may be a deliberate defacing, not just an accidental gouge.

 

I've frequently wondered about this myself.

look at this coin of jaga deva, a 12th century ruler in the Kashmir region.



it does seem to be very similar to this bust of him...

 

I am not knowledgeable about this particular sculpture, but the majority of ancient heads have serious damage to their original noses and museum sculptures usually have restored noses. You cannot trust museum restorations, especially those done a hundred or more years ago. Furthermore, very few ancient sculptures come with ancient labels identifying the person (Museum labels are almost all modern labels). Most imperial sculptures are identified by resemblance to coin portraits. If a Republican or Greek sculpture is identified as a historical individual who did not issue coins, it may be because literary sources describe him in some distinguishable manner (Socrates having a pig-face comes to mind), but there is often a lot of hopeful guesswork involved.

How could a museum even claim a portrait is of Nerva if it does not have a hooked nose? I am sure it is either not Nerva or the nose has been restored (badly).

 

You could be wright about dodgy restorations Valentinian, or that one could be another bloke called Nerva, that photo was from the Vatican. I did however take another one that looks a bit more like the image on coins, but also we are looking at these sculptures full face unlike coins side view and the hooked nose might not be as noticeable, so below is the other one I took and here is the link to the one in Rome's National Museum.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe..._Cocceius_Nerva_in_Museo_Nazionale_Romano.jpg

 

I was wondering if that was the case with this coin but l really have no idea