Head of a young man

By the 1st century B.C., the city of Rome had become the center of a large empire covering the entire Mediterranean world. Like the Etruscans before them, the Romans admired Greek art: they carried Greek art treasures to Italy and patronized imitations or copies of Greek works. However, their native taste for realistic, historically oriented art led to a new, Roman style. By the time of the early Roman Empire, portraiture had crystallized as a distinctive type of Roman art, in keeping with the Roman interest in family lineage. This powerful image of a young man demonstrates the strong sense of psychological reality to be found in Roman portraits.