The Azara Herm: Portrait of Alexander the Great
Unknown, after Lysippos · First half of the 1st century AD (Roman copy)
A head on a square pillar, the form the Greeks called a herm. The face is worn and the nose is a modern replacement, yet the essentials are there: the hair rising from the forehead in the central lock, the head turned slightly and lifted, the deep set eyes, the full lips. Beneath, on the face of the pillar, three lines of Greek are cut, and the first words can still be read: Alexander, son of Philip, Macedonian. No other ancient portrait of the conqueror is labelled with his name, and this herm has been the key to recognising Alexander in every other marble since it was found. The lower part of the pillar was recut long ago and the end of the inscription is lost.
The herm was dug up in 1779 at Tivoli near Rome, in the villa of the Pisones, and was carved in the early first century AD as a copy of a much older type, generally traced back to Lysippos, the sculptor Alexander allowed to portray him. It belonged to the Spanish ambassador José Nicolás de Azara, who presented it to Napoleon Bonaparte, and it entered the Louvre in 1803.
Did You Know? It is the only ancient portrait of Alexander that carries his name, carved in Greek on the pillar beneath the head.
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