Arles: the excavations in Rhone

The bust of Julius Caesar found in the Rhone at Arles

From The Art Newspaper

Archaeologists have been working in Arles in the south of France for the past 25 years.

Important discoveries, which throw new light on the Roman settlement known as Arelate in antiquity, go on show at the Louvre this month.

Among the artefacts they have discovered from the city is an unusual bust of Julius Caesar, which could change our image of the Roman emperor.

Jean-Luc Martinez, the keeper of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities at the Louvre, believes the Arles bust, lent by the Arles Museum of Antiquity, could be the only surviving lifelike sculpture of the emperor.

Until the discovery of this portrait of Caesar in Arles, says Martinez, experts considered a marble bust (about 40BC) of a thinner-faced Caesar discovered in Tusculum near Rome and now in the Museum of Antiquities, Turin, to be the best representation of him because it resembles his profile found on coins minted around 44BC.


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Mediterranean sea France DRASSM museum Roman

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