Besides real portraits, imaginary portraits of great excellence
were produced in the Hellenistic period. Fig. 176 is a good
specimen of these. Only the head is antique, and there are some
restorations, including the nose. This is one of a considerable
number of heads which reproduce an ideal portrait of Homer,
conceived as a blind old man. The marks of age and blindness are
rendered with great fidelity. There is a variant type of this head
which is much more suggestive of poetical inspiration.
Portraiture, of course, did not confine itself to men of
refinement and intellect. As an extreme example of what was
possible in the opposite direction nothing could be better than
the original bronze statue shown in Fig. 177. It was found in Rome
in 1885, and is essentially complete, except for the missing
eyeballs; the seat is new. The statue represents a naked boxer of
herculean frame, his hands armed with the aestus or boxing-gloves
made of leather. The man is evidently a professional "bruiser" of
the lowest type.
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