The Wrong Caesars

 

I hinted a couple of posts ago that I was planning to visit Anglesey Abbey over Easter. I was on the trail of a set of four Caesars, paintings (done in the seventeeth or eighteenth century?) based on some engravings of emperors by Antonio Tempesta. That is Claudius above, in the painting. And below, it's him in the Tempesta engraving. Obvious.

The other three emperors at Anglesey Abbey are said to be Hadrian (directly above), and Caligula and Nero (to left and right below).

It doesn't take much to see that there is something the matter here.

For a start, if it is Hadrian why isnt he bearded? And anyway to my knowledge Tempesta never did a Hadrian. His set of emperors was the Suetonian Twelve, from Caesar to Domitian.

If you go back to the Tempesta engravings it is as clear as day that  what we have here is a Caesar (not Hadrian), an Augustus (not Caligula), and a Vitellius (not Nero).

I have put the Tempestas at the very bottom of this post, to make the point. But my questions are these. First when did they become misidentified? My current project is interested in the long history of imperial mistaken identities. And in this case it seems pretty clear that they have long gone under the wrong names (at least those are what are inscribed on the relatively old frames).

Second, where are the others? I dont really imagine a painter would pick those 4 from the set of 12 to convert to paint; so I am looking for 8 more. Has anyone seen them. There are other Tempesta version of emperors on the web, but not in quite the same style or size.  My set are quite small (not much more than 60 cm by 50 cm), and as they are not named in the painting (and as they dont hit you in the face as Roman emperors), they might be lurking under yet another identity.