Colossal head of the tetrarch Maximinus Daia(?)

With its compact style and strikingly cuboid form, this head, which must once have topped a full-length portrait statue, is an impressive example of Late Antique imperial portraiture from the period of the tetrarchy. The head has been attributed to a Pamphylian workshop, based on the way the hair is rendered. The marble used is from the quarries at Dokimeion in Phrygia. This is not surprising, since Pamphylia did not have its own local outcrops of marble and therefore had to import it from further afield. The imperial marble workshops at Dokimeion played an important role in Pamphylian sculpture production; in the 3rd century there even seems to have been a subsidiary workshop at Side. The sculptures were prepared as blanks close to the quarries and then transported to the coastal port for the finer work of carving. In the case of our tetrarch, the sculptor responsible confined his work to the front half of the statue and left the back in its roughly carved state. On the right side of the head, the boundary between the fully worked front and the coarsely carved rear runs vertically through the middle of the ear, while on the other side it lies further back, just behind the ear. This asymmetry suggests that the head was originally turned slightly to the left. Scholars have always been unanimous in identifying our head as that of an emperor (augustus) or a ‘junior emperor’ (caesar) of the late tetrarchy of AD 305 to 315. The smoothness of the complexion, the plastic qualities and calm features are generally interpreted as stemming from the second tetrarchy’s efforts to break with the more expressive and less conventionally proportioned forms of the earlier tetrarchy and create a new image of themselves as rulers. What scholars have not agreed on, however, is the question of whether this head belonged to the first portrait type of Constantine, who was made junior emperor of the Western Empire in AD 306, depicting him with a ‘mourning beard’, or an image of Maximinus Daia, who ruled as junior emperor of the Eastern Empire from AD 311 to 313. Since Constantine came to power in the West and never appeared with a beard after his accession, it seems evident that we should favour the alternative interpretation; that our head, which originated in the East, represents Maximinus. In any case, however, the heads of tetrarchs rarely show any distinguishing features. Most portraits of tetrarchs can be described as standardised images rather than individual portraits. That is also true of the Basel tetrarch. (tl)

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