What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book—against a background of today’s “sculpture wars”—Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the Western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors.

Published by Princeton University Press in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, this publication follows Beard’s 2011 presentation of the 60th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.