Portrait of the emperor Hadrian

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Hadrian, like all Roman emperors, used statues to spread his image across the Roman world. Statues often depicted the emperor as a general or a priest. This bust shows Hadrian without clothes. This nudity, originally a Greek style, showed that the emperor was heroic and almost divine. This Roman marble portrait of Emperor Hadrian (reign 117-138 AD) now in the British Museum, formerly owned by Charles Townley. The bust portrays the emperor bare-chested; the evocation of the Greek concept of "heroic nudity." Hadrian was the first emperor to show himself regularly with a beard (maybe referencing the idea of a Greek philosopher). In the early second century sculptors began to drill pupils into the eyes. Previously most would have been painted on the bust.