c. 1460-1465

Portrait of the Ancient Roman General Scipio

Italian (active Florence and Rome), 1429 - 1484

This relief is an imaginary portrayal of Scipio Africanus, a general of the Roman Republic who fought in the Punic Wars (264–146 BCE) between ancient Rome and the North African city of Carthage. Victorious over the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal, Scipio has been highly regarded as a military commander throughout history. In Italy in the late 1400s, profile portraits of figures from antiquity—often based on ancient coins bearing images of Roman emperors—emerged as a popular sculptural genre. Examples of these sophisticated Florentine classical reliefs were frequently displayed in a scholar’s study as part of a collection of ancient and contemporary works of art. The sculptor Mino da Fiesole was a particularly accomplished and prolific master of the genre.