A Marble Portrait Head of the Emperor Claudius, Roman imperial, late in the reign of Claudius, circa A.D. 50-54

with furrowed brow, his hair radiating from the crown and falling in centrally parted crescentic locks over the forehead, the irises and pupils carved in later times and now filled in, the nose once restored in marble.

discovered in Cimiez, Nice, in 1937
the architect Louis Millon de Peillon, Nice
French family collection, Nice, by descent from the above

Fernand Benoît, Cimiez, la ville antique: monuments, histoire, vol. 2, Paris, 1977, pp. 38-39
Danièle Terrer, “Un portrait de Claude à Nice,” Revue archéologique de Narbonnaise, vol. 18, 1985, pp. 393-398

Proper right jaw and most of neck missing, proper right ear abraded, proper left ear summarily restored in plaster, surface slightly worn, nose formerly restored in marble.
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A plaster cast of the present head was executed in 1966 and placed in the Musée archéologique de Nice-Cimiez, inv. no. Mo. 66 CIM. 9.1. It has been on exhibition ever since.

The head was reportedly discovered in 1937 on the site of the ancient Roman city of Cemelenum, now Cimiez, a neighborhood of Nice. It emerged during construction of parking garages belonging to the defunct Hotel Régina (formerly the Excelsior Régina Palace), a massive Belle-Époque building which was transformed into an apartment complex in 1937. This places the location of discovery outside of the ancient city limits. Terrer (op. cit., 1985) suggests an alternate find-spot in the northern part of the ancient city, where the architect Millon de Peillon was also working on a construction site.

A portrait statue of Claudius's mother, Antonia Minor, was discovered in Cimiez in 1958 (see Benoît, op. cit., 1977, pp. 14-19 and 42-43).

For another portrait of Claudius also showing him more advanced in age than in most examples see the head in Saragossa (M. Beltran Noris, 1981). For another related yet more idealized and younger-looking portrait in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek see V. Poulsen, Les portraits romains, vol. I, Copenhagen, 1962, no. 57, pls. XCIV-XCV.