PETER SCHERTZ

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Research & Restoration, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Portrait Statue of Caligula

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond, Virginia, possesses one of the finest and most important images of a Roman emperor in North America, a full-length statue of the Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, more popularly known as “Caligula” (“Little Boot”).

Portrait Statue of Emperor Gaius (“Caligula”), 37–41 CE

(Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund 71.20)

1971 restoration.

© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The statue’s beauty lies in the exquisite craftsmanship of the stone carving, so subtle that it conveys a sense of the overlapping layers of clothing that Caligula wears and even records “press lines”—the lines that an actual toga would have had after being folded and stored in a chest when it was not in use and that are clearly distinguishable from the folds of the toga.

Horizontal press lines along the left side of Caligula’s toga

Photo by Mark Abbe

The statue’s importance lies in the fact that Caligula ruled for less than four years before he was assassinated, and he was so unpopular that almost all images of him were destroyed, defaced, or recarved into likenesses of more acceptable Romans. Today, only two full-length statues of Caligula are known, the example in Richmond’s VMFA and the portrait of a youthful Caligula found in Gortyn, Crete (the Roman capital of that region under Caligula’s rule).

The Gortyn statue, like VMFA’s, shows Caligula wearing a toga, but in this case his head is veiled, indicating that he is taking part in a religious ceremony (probably his outstretched right hand held a patera for pouring libations). The youthfulness of the Gortyn Caligula suggests that the statue was made before Caligula became Princeps, “First Citizen,” the official title of the early emperors.

Portrait Statue of the young Caligula capite

velato, circa 32 CE, Gortyn, Crete

Photo by Peter Schertz, VMFA curator of

ancient art



In 2010, the University of Virginia and VMFA received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to undertake new technical studies of the Richmond Caligula under the codirection of Dr. Bernie Frischer, UVA professor of classics and art history, and myself.

The primary goal of the technical studies was to make a 3D model of the statue and to study its ancient polychromy, the added colors that were a part of all ancient marble statues.

A second goal of the project was to promote a better understanding of the statue’s ancient topographical context, appearance, and cultural significance. We assembled an international team of scholars to address questions of the original appearance of the statue, its ancient context and rediscovery in the nineteenth century, and historical issues surrounding Caligula’s life and reign.