Inv. Scu 565

The portrait features and elderly man with the head slightly turned to right; the head is adapted to a modern bust with a trapezoidal shape. The wrinkled forehead is high, with a receding hairline, the hair is arranged in thin, rather coarse locks. The eyes are surmounted by arched eyebrows. The features are rendered with a rather brutal realism.

Though the nineteenth-century identification with Cato is not valid anymore, the portrait can be dated to the Late republican period.

Formerly in the collection of the cardinal Alessandro Albani, the portrait was acquired for the Capitoline Museum in 1733; once in the Palazzo Nuovo, the sculpture was relocated many times; in the early twentieth century it was displayed in the Sala dei Filosofi.