Relief of a Roman Emperor Gregorio di Lorenzo

The profile portraits of the Roman emperors were a typical iconographical form of portraiture in the Florentine quattrocento. In 121 AD the Roman historian Suetonius wrote the biography of Julius Caesar and that of the eleven Roman emperors who followed him. The emperor portraits were made under the influence of this book. A document from 1472 relates that the Florentine sculptor Gregorio di Lorenzo transported to Naples a portrait series of Roman emperors together with a Virgin and Child representation. Several emperor portraits are known today which, as this relief in Budapest, bear the characteristics of Gregorio di Lorenzo’s artworks. The sculptor firstly worked in Florence, then obtained commissions from Naples and Ferrara, from 1475 he was in Buda, leaving Hungary probably around 1491 after the dead of the King Matthias. For a long time, the sculptor working in the court of King Matthias was nicknamed the Master of Marble Madonnas, only recently being identified with the Florentine master known from documents.