The portrait of Aeschylus (Athens, 525-456 B.C.), author of the Oresteia trilogy, among others, was also created more than a century after his death, during the 110^th Olympiad (340-336 B.C.). At that time the Athenian politician Lycurgus decreed that statues of the three great tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, should be erected in the Dionysian theater in Athens. Similarities to the “Lateran-type” portrait of Sophocles enable us to date this bust of Aeschylus between 340 and 330 B.C. The splendid portrait in the Farnese Collection (now in the Naples Museum), well-known during the 18^th century, is one of the nine ancient copies of the Greek original in existence. It was very probably the model for the Classical-style replica shown here. The head is very well executed with great attention to detail, for instance in the eyebrows. The sculptor went to great lengths to “age” the piece, chipping and scratching the marble and adding patches in a different stone. We know that José Nicolás de Azara, its first owner, was in the habit of buying recently made replicas to fill out his collection of excavated ancient statuary (Text drawn from Schröder, Stephan; The Majesty of Spain, Jackson, Mississippi, 2001, p. 114).

The Majesty of Spain. Royal collections from the Museo del Prado and the Patrimonio Nacional presented by The Mississippi Commission for International Cultural Exchange, Jackson, Mississipi Commission For International Cultural Exchange, 2001, p.114