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The correct identification of this bust as a portrait of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (r. 161 – 180 CE) was first proposed by Johann Gottfried Lipsius in 1798 in his description of the Dresden Antiquities Gallery: “Many connoisseurs have, however, preferred to see this beautiful head, with its candid, good-natured face, as Marcus Aurelius, and we are not averse to endorsing this opinion, which has much to commend it.”