Half-Length Busts of a Married Couple

For a certain kind of learned and archaizing Humanism, antiquity was a repertoire of “archetypes to be received and reproduced” (Garin), and great was the modern artist who had created works equal in beauty to the ancient ones, measuring himself against them on the same themes and stylistic motifs. This relief, which takes its cue from Roman funerary portraits, is a typical example of that cultural position.