Italian, Florentine (?), 'Head of 'The Dying Alexander'', 17th-18th century

This sculpture in imperial Egyptian porphyry on a marble pedestal is a copy of a famous antique marble head in the Uffizi, Florence. The young beardless man turns to the left and looks upwards as though suffering mental or physical pain. The sculpture in the Uffizi, which belonged to the Medici from 1579, was long known as ‘The Dying Alexander’ due to a later inscription (‘Alessandro’) on its pedestal. However, there is no actual evidence that it was originally intended to represent the dying hero Alexander the Great.

The Roman historian Plutarch wrote that only the sculptor Lysippus was permitted by Alexander to make his portrait. But it is very unlikely that an ancient Greek sculptor, even Lysippus, would have created such a dramatic likeness. It also does not resemble known portraits of Alexander, such as the Azara Herm – a Roman marble copy of a Greek head of Alexander the Great – now in the Louvre, Paris. The inscription ‘Alessandro’ was probably added when the head underwent significant restoration, especially to the back and to the hair, and reflects a desire to find in ancient sculptures illustrations of ancient history.

Once the Azara Herm portrait of Alexander the Great was discovered in Tivoli in 1779, the Uffizi head was no longer believed to represent him and its fame slowly declined. It has been suggested that the face is actually copied from the head of a young giant from the Gigantomachia of Pergamum – an ancient narrative sculptural frieze which is part of the Pergamon Altar now in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

Imperial porphyry is a notoriously hard material worked by only a few craftsmen in Florence and Rome and occasionally elsewhere (notably Paris) from the late sixteenth century onwards, reusing ancient columns, shafts and other fragments. The National Gallery’s head may have been made in Florence in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. It is one of only a handful of sculptures in the collection.