Portrait of Eutropios

This expressive bust of an older man appears to have been erected as part of an honorary monument, given the site where it was found: in a columned hall near the great theatre of Ephesus on the so-called marble road of the city. In the 5th century AD, a time in which Constantinople under the emperor Theodosius II
and his successors became the most important city of the (Eastern) Roman Empire, the marble road was still a main street of impressive character. The portrait subject is generally believed to be Eutropios, an Ephesian identified – by a Greek inscription on a pedestal found nearby – as the donor who paid for the streets of Ephesus to be paved. The design of the bust is typical of the tendency in late antiquity towards formal abstraction while heightening the personal characteristics of the subject. It is in keeping with the portraits that were made of higher officials of a provincial Roman city. The frontal, elongated head betrays almost no emotion; the eyes are wide open and their fixed stare into the distance gives them further emphasis. The short, slightly wavy hair bulges like a cap at the temples, leaving the large ears exposed. This bust is considered a masterpiece by an artist from a local workshop, and it is exceptional in the quality of the work: the economy of form, the tension of the outlines and facial structure as well as the perfect accentuation and exaggeration of details (around the eyes, for example) are marks of a greatstylistic change in late antiquity. The abstraction of the external image reflects the development within Roman society towards a strictly hierarchical state, marked by Byzantine court ceremonial. Unapproachability, distance and dignity are here combined with adherence to traditional moral values. © Kurt Gschwantler, Alfred Bernhard-Walcher, Manuela Laubenberger, Georg Plattner, Karoline Zhuber-Okrog, Masterpieces in the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2011