RECTOR AND VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Thanks to the generous support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (RZ-51221), in September 2010, The Digital Sculpture Project in partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and industrial sponsor Direct Dimensions digitized the portrait of the emperor Caligula in Richmond, Virginia. The purpose of the project was to shed new light on a statue that is considered one of the most important Roman portraits in an American collection. The research issues ranged from matters of conservation such as polychromy and the correct positioning of the head, to provenience and interpretation. An interdisciplinary research team addressed these questions. Throughout the project 3D models of the statue played an important role. Since the members of the team were scattered from Italy and Denmark to California, the availability of a 3D state model of the statue was an indispensable resource. As conservators and archaeologists developed new evidence or hypotheses about the..