To mark the Mostra Espanha 2011, which will be staged for a month in a number of Portuguese cities, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Spanish Ministry of Culture are presenting the exhibition Faces of Rome.
It consists of a valuable collection of thirty-four pieces, including statues, busts, heads and sarcophagi created between the 1st century BC and the 3rd AD, and representing figures such as Nero, Mark Anthony and Alexander the Great. The exhibits reflect the extraordinary quality and different typologies of Roman portraits, along with a reassessment of the iconography of power and the use of image as a means of political propaganda and aggrandisement on behalf of the subjects depicted.
The exhibition is divided into three major sections: Monarchs and Philosophers, Historia Augusta and Cives Romani, and includes an exceptional set of 15 imperial portraits representing the leading dynasties which ruled over Imperial Rome: Julio-Claudian, Flavii, Antonines and Severi. They are accompanied by a selection of private portraits, including funereal pieces such as sarcophagi and stelae.
Mostra Espanha 2011 is a continuation of the undertaking signed in 2009 to present key aspects of Spanish cultural output in Portugal every two years, as a counterpart to the work undertaken for several years in Spain with the Mostras Portuguesas, which are now in their ninth edition.