The "portrait" of Theophrastus
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The "portrait" of Theophrastus[1] refers to a bust supposedly depicting Theophrastus.
The marble herm figure with the bearded head of philosopher type, bearing the explicit inscription, must be taken as purely conventional. Unidentified portrait heads did not find a ready market in post-Renaissance Rome.
"Since 'unknown portraits' were not valued highly, identifying inscriptions were often added to classical portraits by antiquaries and collectors before modern scholarship condemned the practice" (André Thevet and Fulvio Orsini: The Beginnings of the Modern Tradition of Classical Portrait Iconography).
This bust was formerly in the collection of marchese Pietro Massimi at Palazzo Massimi and belonged to marchese L. Massimi at the time the engraving was made. It is now in the Villa Albani, Rome (inv. 1034). The inscribed bust has often been illustrated in engravings and photographs: a photograph of it forms the frontispiece to the Loeb Classical Library Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants vol. I, 1916. André Thevet illustrated in his iconographic compendium, Les Vrais portraits et vies des hommes illustres (Paris, 1584), an alleged portrait plagiarized from the bust, supporting his fraud with the invented tale that he had obtained it from the library of a Greek in Cyprus and that he had seen a confirming bust in the ruins of Antioch.
See also
![[1]](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Theophrastus.jpg){kind=link}