Ancient Roman statuary at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: STATUA DI ANTONINO PIO (Fletcher Fund, 1933)

Speranza

Marble portrait of the emperor Antonino Pio
Period: Antonine
Date: ca. A.D. 138–161
Culture: Roman
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: H. 40.2 cm
Classification: Stone Sculpture
Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1933
Accession Number: 33.11.3

Antonino Pio was adopted by Adriano as his successor when he was already fifty-one years old.

His portraits thus represent him as a mature man in a sober but refined style that consciously echoes the imperial imagery adopted by Adriano

At the beginning of his reign in A.D. 138, he had to impel a reluctant Senate to award Hadrian divine honors, and it is probably for this reason that he himself was given the title of Pius.

Unlike his two immediate predecessors, Trajan and Hadrian, Antoninus did not embark on any major wars or travel widely through the Empire.

Indeed, he was in effect the last emperor to spend most of his reign in the city of Rome itself.

Regarded as a just and diligent administrator, Antoninus presided over the Empire at the height of its power—a time that the historian Edward Gibbon later famously referred to as the period when “the condition of the human race was most happy and most prosperous.”

References:

Alexander, C.
1934. "A Portrait of Antoninus Pius."
Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 29(2): p. 28.

McCann, A.
1978. Roman Sarcophagi in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 28-29, fig. 22.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1987.
Greece and Rome. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
no. 102, pp. 134-35.

Picon, Carlos A., et al. 2007. Art of the Classical World in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 447, pp. 382, 493.