Pair Of Marble Medallions depicting the Roman Emperors Caesar and Augustus

Pair of Marble Medallions depicting the Roman Emperors Caesar and Augustus, in the manner of Giovanni Battista Foggini.
Carrara marble and wooden frame.
Italie.
End of 17th century.
? 54 cm ; ? 48 cm.

This pair of Carrara marble medallions depicts two laurel-crowned Roman emperors facing each other.
The first, with a gaunt face and wrinkled skin, is Caius Julius Caesar : the first of the twelve Caesars immortalized in Suetonius's Lives ; the other is certainly Augustus, who immediately succeeded him.
Augustus has eight laurel leaves on his head, fewer than Caesar’s twelve. This difference adheres to the iconography of emperor profiles created since the Renaissance based on ancient models.
While the representation canon of the twelve Caesars remained generally the same from the 16th to the 19th century, some variations in iconography allow for more precise dating, depending on the popular antique masterpiece of the time or the collection whose prestige was most widespread throughout Europe through the books of engravings.

The iconography of the Julius Caesar medallion is that of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. A profile of Julius Caesar, in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, drawn by the engraver and draughtsman Jan Caspar Philips, shows the same peculiarities in iconography, including the facial and neck wrinkles of Caesar and the folds of the ribbon tying his laurel wreath. A medallion by Jacques Laudin dated between 1680 and 1700, now in the Louvre, follows the same conventions.

The specificities of this iconography, which underwent significant changes before the end of the 18th century, as well as the technical quality of these two marbles, suggest it was most likely sculpted at the end of the 17th century. They are thus comparable to the series of twelve marble emperor medallions sculpted by the Florentine baroque sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini at the end of the 17th century, four of which are now visible in the Reggia di Caserta.

The medallions are protected by a less ancient varnished wooden frame. Some damage to Caesar's marble, and some signs of aging on the presumed marble of Augustus, are present. Each medallion is signed with the monogram "F. F." on the back.