Crowned Male Bust

The authenticity of the work, which is universally recognised by scholars as a marble statue produced by a workshop during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II of Swabia, can be taken for granted. Among other things, analysis has shown that the stone is in all probability of Hellenic origin. It can therefore be suggested that the craftsman made use of scrap material, such as a small block salvaged from some ancient monument dating from the classical era. Catalogued in the Marcenaro Collection as a work of the Sicilian School, it was instead identified as originating in the Classicism of Frederick’s reign by Federico Zeri, in an expert appraisal carried out when the entire corpus was absorbed into the Cariplo Collection. Examination of the sculpture, which arrived in a good state of preservation with the exception of a break at the tip of the nose and a possible element of 19th-century “retouching”, suggests that it formed part of a complex architectural structure, possibly a niche in a city gate. The bust must have been located to one side, thus explaining why the head is turned to the right. The fact that the base is made up of two elements, the lower with a spiral design and a palmetto in the middle, the upper rusticated, would support this hypothesis. The question of identifying the face as a portrait of Frederick II proves rather more complex, given that the known images appear very dissimilar and are differently characterised. Some common factors can, however, be identified on the basis of the gold coins (augustalis) minted in 1231, namely the absence of facial hair, the crowned head with curly hair leaving the ear visible, and the “ancient-style” garment with a fibula clasp. These elements also appear in the statue of Frederick in his imperial majesty that adorned the city gate of Capua (now lost but known through drawings: Séroux d’Agincourt, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Vatican) as well as the laurel-wreathed head from Castel del Monte and the bust in Barletta. The statue differs from all these in that the figure is wearing “modern” dress and a pendant necklace. In our view, it is unlikely that each of these faces can be interpreted as a portrait in the modern sense of the word. In actual fact, the type of artistic production promoted by Frederick II marked the birth of a new way of representing the face, by taking works of the Graeco-Roman era as a starting point and combining this with a naturalistic approach that was to lead to the development of western art. In this sense, the Cariplo bust can be seen as part of a broader process, bearing witness to the development of a figurative vocabulary initiated in the region of Puglia and apparently responsive to influences of French origin. Bari and Puglia were in any event places of transit for pilgrims and crusaders. The work can, in fact, be seen as a qualitatively important example of the cultural melting pot in which the art of Nicola Pisano was to develop. Comparison with the capital carved to represent the head of Jupiter in Siena Cathedral reveals highly significant similarities.