The Newborn

Ivory Cane Knob.

From a bouquet of flowers held by a hand emerges the head of a baby, with an elongated oval.

Its forehead, high and narrow, is crowned with curls.

He tends to our dazzled eyes his blistered cheeks between which a small leaky chin withdraws, his little nose rolled up and flattened, his eyes wide open with the hollowed pupils, his fleshy mouth, with an advanced upper lip.

The hair consists of a series of waves protruding in relief, subdivided by incisions, which form curls on the top of the head, on the left and on the right.

The stocky neck, almost non-existent, surrounded by a fold, is surrounded by a large crown of flowers and leaves.

As it has been designated many times, this bust would represent, with the greatest probability, Annius Verus.

The consul of these years 162-163 AD, at the birth of Annius Verus, was Marcus Aurelius himself, consul for the third time, Lucius Verus being for the second time.

Marcus Aurelius presents his last newborn, lending him the intimate diminutive of Verinus, of a child who radiated happiness and "probat tempora".

The conception of the whole and especially the transposition of the laughing nature and the deep being of the child, made present in his volume of soft, soft and shimmering flesh, reveals the work of a master.

Several replicas and variants are known from the bust of ANNIUS VERUS, one at the Louvre from the treasure of Saint-Denis (Saint-Denis, p. 292, no. 65); one at the Musée de l'Ermitage (Neverov, Antique Cameos, no 103), and one in Dumbarton Oaks (Richter, Catalogue of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, 1956, p. 14, no 10, pl. 5 A-B; id., Handbook of the Byzantine collection, Washington, 1967).

Height 8 centimeters, width 4 centimeters