The head was acquired from the sculptor when he visited London in 1896; he was then working in Paris - he was a contemporary of Rodin - and his international reputation becoming established. The work is an adaptation of an antique marble portrait that had been much reproduced from the seventeenth century onwards. Rosso's choice of the ugliest of the Roman emperors illustrates his anti-classical approach to earlier sculpture. The generalised features are characteristic of his lucid technique of modelling.