Head of Caracalla
Head of Caracalla, Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725 - 1805) c. 1768
1999.48
Not on display
Jean-Baptiste Greuze drew this powerful chalk study in preparation for his painting Septimius Severus Reproaching Caracalla (1768-69, Musée du Louvre). Caracalla (ad 188-217) plotted the assassination of his father, the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. In the painting, Greuze depicted the moment when the father confronted the son, and we see a close up view in this drawing: Caracalla turns away from his father, his face reflecting both anger and shame. Greuze was fascinated by the subtleties of human emotional expression conveyed by the face and made many drawings of "expressive heads" (a genre the French call a tête d'expression). Greuze based his Caracalla on a famous Roman bust in marble, which the artist would have seen when he studied in Rome between 1755 and 1757. He also knew a plaster cast of the bust and even made drawings directly from it in preparation for the painting. The drawing shown here, however, represents his own adaptation of the Caracalla, striking in its intensity of expression and bold strokes of red chalk.
Images Copyright © the artist, their estate, and/or the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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