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Lot Essay
The present marble is after a bust of the empress, circa 147-148BC, from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli and now in the Capitoline Museums, Rome (MC0449). Faustina the Younger was the wife of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The legends of her adulteries were epic and included the notion that her son, the Emperor Commodus, was fathered by a gladiator.
Francis Harwood was an English sculptor who lived and worked in Florence and is best remembered as a superior copyist of antique works, and his large studio became a stopping point on the tourist itinerary for aristocrats on the Grand Tour of Italy. Another version of this bust by Harwood is at Castle Ashby, the home of the Marquess of Northampton. The beautiful detailing of the drapery and the hair are very closely comparable. Castle Ashby holds a group of Harwood's works and the bust of Faustina is recorded in a bill from Florence dated 1767 priced at 50 shillings.
Francis Harwood was an English sculptor who lived and worked in Florence and is best remembered as a superior copyist of antique works, and his large studio became a stopping point on the tourist itinerary for aristocrats on the Grand Tour of Italy. Another version of this bust by Harwood is at Castle Ashby, the home of the Marquess of Northampton. The beautiful detailing of the drapery and the hair are very closely comparable. Castle Ashby holds a group of Harwood's works and the bust of Faustina is recorded in a bill from Florence dated 1767 priced at 50 shillings.