Three bronze portraits of the Roman emperor Hadrian ∆ (117-138 AD)

Unknown artists

Bronze

 

Photograph by Elie Posner, courtesy of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

 

“Varius Multiplex Multiformis” ◇ — Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian¶

 

 

 

 

 

 

∆  In 2015, the only three bronze portraits of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76–138 AD) to have survived from antiquity were brought together for a first-time display in The Israel Museum, marking a symbolic return of the Emperor to Jerusalem, whose last visit to the city was in 130 AD. One from the British Museum, found in 1834 in London in the river Thames; the other from the collection of the Louvre Museum, thought to have originated in Egypt or Asia Minor; and the third, found in the camp of the Sixth Roman Legion in Tel Shalem, which is on display at the Israel Museum’s permanent exhibition.

 

◇  Varius Multiplex Multiformis (Varied, Multilayered, Polymorphic) is the title of the second chapter of Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), a novel by the French novelist and essayist Marguerite Yourcenar (1903–1987) about the life and death of Roman emperor Hadrian, one of the ‘Five Good Emperors’ (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius) from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty (96–192 AD).