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Head of Alexander the Great, known as the Alexander Guimet
Unknown · c. 300 BC, or 170-160 BC
A youthful face turns slightly to its left, lips parted, eyes deep set under a swelling brow, and from the centre of the forehead a thick lock of hair rises and falls back to either side. That lock, the anastole, is the signature of Alexander the Great in every portrait made after his death. The marble is worked with great delicacy in the cheeks and mouth, while the top and back of the skull show traces of pieces added in marble or stucco and a dowel hole, so the head was completed and fixed to a body or a bust. The right side of the neck and part of the nose are missing.
The head was found in Cairo and was made in Egypt, where Alexander's cult as founder of Alexandria and ancestor of the Ptolemies kept his image alive for generations. Specialists disagree about its date: some place it around 300 BC, within living memory of the king, others in the second century BC, when Ptolemaic art revived the early portrait types. It belonged to Emile Guimet's museum, which is why it is known as the Alexander Guimet, and passed to the Louvre in 1954.
Did You Know? The lock of hair rising from the centre of the forehead, the anastole, was Alexander's trademark and was copied by kings for centuries.
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