This marble sculpture is of Augustus Caesar, who reigned as the first emperor of Rome from 27 BCE until his death in 14 CE. Augustus stands barefoot in contrapposto, his right arm raised in the classical adlocutio gesture. He wears military dress, and so gestures rhetorically towards his troops.
The sculpture is a near life-size scale copy after the famous marble original known as the ‘Augustus of Prima Porta’, which now resides in the Vatican Museums. The marble original, which itself is likely a copy after a now lost bronze, was created during the first years of the 1st Century AD.
