New Studies on the Portrait of Caligula in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The essays in New Studies on the Portrait of Caligula in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts address art historical, historical, cultural and museological issues raised by one of two surviving intact statues of the Roman emperor Caligula (r. 37-41 C.E.). Contributions focus on the creation of a 3D-digital model of the statue and the search for traces of its original polychromy; the history of the statue from its creation to the present, including its rediscovery at a Julio-Claudian sanctuary at Bovillae; aspects of Caligula’s literary and visual portrayal in antiquity and modern historiography (including questions concerning the destruction of his portraits and the implications of Jewish sources for the study of Caligula); and the emperor’s image in popular culture.

Peter J.M. Schertz, PhD University of Southern California (2006), is the Jack and Mary Ann Frable Curator of Ancient Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He curated the exhibition The Horse in Ancient Greek Art (2017-2018) and serves as co-director of the Arch of Titus Digital Restoration Project of the Center for Israel Studies of Yeshiva University. He has written on the museum profession and the Second Temple of Jerusalem and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Association of Art Museum Curators.
Bernard Frischer, Ph.D. University of Heidelberg (1975) is a digital archaeologist who writes about virtual heritage, Classics, and the survival of the Classical world. He started work in Virtual Heritage in the 1990s, when he was founding director of the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory. In 2016 he started a five-year project to digitize in 3D all the ancient Greek and Roman statues in Uffizi Gallery in Florence. He was co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the online, peer-reviewed journal, Studies in Digital Heritage, published by the Indiana University Virtual World Heritage Laboratory, which he directs.

Contributors are: Peter J.M. Schertz; Bernard Frischer; Mark Abbe; Maria Grazia Picozzi; Paolo Liverani; Jan Stubbe Østergaard; Eric Varner; John Pollini; Vasily Rudich; Steven Fine; Amy Byrne.