A New Roman Imperial Relief Said to Be from Southern Spain: Problems of Style, Iconography, and Marble Type in Determining Provenance

A very fine-grained white marble “historical” relief, featuring three figures and part of a Latin inscription, is said to be from Southern Spain. This privately owned relief, presently on loan to the J. Paul Getty Museum, represents the Emperor Tiberius being introduced by a female personification to an enthroned semi-nude figure holding a cornucopia. This article examines the style, iconography, and marble type in an attempt to determine if it may indeed originally have come from Southern Spain. Based on the combined petrographic, cathodoluminescence and a C and O isotopic analysis, the marble proved to be from the Luni-Carrara quarries. This prestige marble from Italy was used in Roman Hispania for different decorative sculptural programs, especially those of the Augustan and Julio-Claudian period. Explored here are various issues associated with this relief, its provenance, and date