Facial transformations of ancient portraits: the face of Caesar

Some software solutions used to obtain the facial transformations can help investigating the artistic metamorphosis of the ancient portraits of the same person. An analysis with a freely available software of portraitures of Julius Caesar is proposed, showing his several " morphs ". The software helps enhancing the mood the artist added to a portrait. In image processing, a facial transformation can be used to simulate rejuvenation or aging of faces, and even to produce variations, the morphs, from a face into another, often through the smooth transitions of a metamorphic sequence. However, if we consider the representation of a face in painting, photography or sculpture, here too we can find a sort of morph, in particular when the face expression is the predominant feature of the portraiture. In fact, the intent of a portrait is not only to display the face, but also to show the mood of the person. As a result, as told in [1], for some viewers a portrait is a sort of living being: " Portraits contain images that with bewildering success pretend not to be signs or tokens invented by artists, but rather aim to represent the manner in which their subjects would appear to the viewer in life ". In ancient times, the sculptures in marble or stone and casts in bronze were the means to preserve the likenesses of men of distinction [2]. Portraits on substrates having lesser durability and resistance such as on wood and canvas existed, however they rarely survived, such as some mummy portraits of the Egyptian Ptolemaic Dynasty [3]. In some cases, for instance for the busts of Julius Caesar, we have the possibility to investigate several portraits, or " morphs " , of the same person and determine how the variations imposed by each artist determined a shift from an appearance to another. A first detailed study, accompanied by photographic pictures, of the marble busts of Julius Caesar was performed in 1903 by the architect Frank J. Scott. As he tells in the introduction of his book [2] on the portraitures of Caesar, in Rome, " for a few centuries before and after Julius Caesar, nearly every citizen who acquired reputation or notoriety in Rome was likely to be well or badly portrayed by some sculptor ". For his critical study and comparison, Scott decided to see personally all Caesar busts and statues and " to obtain …