History

The famous figure from which this bust is taken was known to have been in the Vatican by at least 1511. Since then, academic arguments have raged as to where it must have come from, which century it was made in (generally thought to have been the 2nd or 3rd Century A.D) and whether it was a rendition of a still earlier original. Napoleon saw to it that it found its way to Paris after the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797; it returned to Rome in February 1816.