Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum: European Sculpture

2 CONRAT MEIT
German (active in France,
Brabant, Mechelen, and
Antwerp), l480s?-l550/
Head of a Man (possibly a
portrait of Cicero), circa 1520
Alabaster
33 cm (13 in.)
96.SA.

Born in Worms, Meit was in Wittenberg by 1511, working for the Saxon elector

Friedrich the Wise, who also employed Albrecht Durer and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Around 1512 the sculptor moved permanently from Germany, and in 1514 he became

official court sculptor to Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), regent of the Netherlands,

in Mechelen. In 1526, Meit began work on his first monumental undertaking, the

tombs of Margaret, Philibert, and Philibert's mother, Margaret of Burgundy, in the

Church of Saint Nicolas de Tolentin in Brou. These tombs, together with a signed

alabaster statuette of Judith, provide a secure foundation for the assessment of Meit's

style and the attribution of works to him.

This alabaster Head represents a man of mature age. His hair, rendered in unusual,

spaghetti-like strands, is combed forward toward his face. In addition to the concavity

of his forehead and cheeks, the subject's most striking feature is the prominent mole

or wart at the outer corner of the proper left eye.

The lack of contemporary references in the costume, the togate chest, and the

arrangement of the hair at the crown in a "starfish" pattern that emulates antique

portrait sculpture, all suggest that the Head of a Man is an alVantica depiction

of an ancient figure. It may represent Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), the

famous Roman orator, lawyer, politician, and poet. Since no portraits of Cicero were

known in the Renaissance, sixteenth-century artists were forced to invent their own

iconography for the depiction of this well-known statesman. According to Plutarch

("Cicero," Lives 1.4), Cicero's family name—derived from cicer, or chickpea in Latin—

originated with an ancestor who had a cleft in his nose that resembled a garbanzo bean.

Apparently, Renaissance antiquarians interpreted this physical peculiarity as a wart

or mole and associated it with Marcus Tullius himself. The wart, which could appear

anywhere on the face, came to serve as the identifying attribute for portraits of Cicero.

PAF and PF

18 EUROPEAN SCULPTURE