Written sources as well as surviving visual representations provide some evidence of Alexander’s outward appearance. However, all pertinent literary texts postdate his death, while only much later copies of the Macedonian ruler’s contemporary or early Hellenistic sculptured portraits seem to have survived. Accordingly, both display the posterity’s highly idealized image of Alexander. In all probability, even the earliest securely identified depictions of his face (dating from the period of the Diadochi) substantially differ from the lost portraits that had been (presumably under his own supervision) made during Alexander’s lifetime. Five distinct portrait types are believed to have originated before the fatal year 323 B.C.: (a) the Erbach-Acropolis type, (b) the Dresden type, (c) the Azara type, (d) the Schwarzenberg type, and the so called (e) Alexander Rondanini. Even though all these visual renderings of the young Macedonian king share – albeit to varying degrees – a set of the same distinguishing features (such as the more or less noticeably tilted neck, the youthful beardless face [in some cases suggestively calling to the viewer’s mind the sitter’s textually attested »melting gaze«], and the characteristic anastolé), it is admittedly impossible to determine which of them might come closer to the elusive actual physiognomy of the »real Alexander.«
|
