A well-bred boy

To the modern viewer, this fine portrait of a roughly five-year-old boy may seem unusually melancholy. The boy turns his head slightly to the left side. His thin neck and shoulders are bare. His large, almond-shaped eyes have prominent caruncles at the inner corners and heavy eyelids carved with a metallic crispness. His eyebrows are vaguely arched, his nose snub-shaped and relatively wide, his mouth curvy above a pronounced chin. Combined with the downturned corners of the mouth and the fleshy cheeks, the features coalesce into a somewhat sad expression.
The hair spreads out from a swirl at the back of the head and sweeps towards the forehead, ears, and temples in long arcing locks. At the center of the forehead the long locks part to either side to reveal a fringe of fine, short hair falling across the forehead. The same hairstyle can be found among portraits of the emperor Nero as a boy; but the way it is depicted here is more indicative of male portraits from the reign of the emperor Trajan. The rendering of the flesh and hair also aligns with the somewhat classicizing style of the Trajanic period. The relatively small portion of the body included in the bust is typical of the Flavian period. All considered, the portrait was likely made during the first few years of Trajan’s reign.
The bust was probably acquired by the Vicomte de Beugnot on one of his many trips to Italy. Judging from the high quality of the piece, it may come from a workshop in the city of Rome itself.
In the Roman world, the premature death of a beloved child could lead the family to commission such a portrait. The sculptor may have worked from a death mask moulded in wax from the deceased child’s face. Even if a provenance in a villa or house cannot be excluded for the Berlin piece, its excellent state of preservation speaks in favour of the possibility that it originally stood in the tomb of a wealthy family.
It is highly unlikely that this portrait was meant to convey the sadness and hopelessness of a sick child, as tends to be assumed time and again in the modern scholarship. This type of psychologizing runs utterly counter to the ancient conception of portraiture. Moreover, the original effect of the portrait would have been quite different to its present state due to the added colour: the eyes in particular, which are now repeatedly described as tired and empty, were once painted with pupils and eyelashes that would have given life and energy to the portrait. This portrait by no means represents an ill youth, but rather a textbook example of a disciplined and well-bred little boy.