Prince with Orb. Imperial Rome, 1st century AD. Marble. From a discovery in the ancient city of Urso (Osuna - Seville) in 1903. Very good state of preservation. Measurements: 74 x 47 x 15 cm.; 82 cm. high with pedestal. Marble sculpture representing a half-naked prince, only wearing a small cloak and holding an orb. The canon follows Greek patterns, reproducing an athletic body with supple limbs and smoothly turned thighs. The body adopts a subtle contrapposto and holds an orb or ball of the world in his left hand, an iconographic motif that indicates the figure's political power, his dominion over the imperial territory. It is a motif that was adopted by Christianity in the depictions of the Christ Child with Orb. The draped cloth covers his shoulders and part of his chest, falling like a cascade around his left arm. The deep folds create a skilful play of chiaroscuro and zigzags of great plastic beauty. The smoothness of the skin contrasts with the roughness of the garment. The Romans followed Greek models for much of their sculptural production, the basis for which in Rome was combined with the Etruscan tradition. After the first contacts with Classical Greece through the Magna Graecia colonies, the Romans conquered Syracuse in 212 BC, a rich and important Greek colony in Sicily, which was adorned with a large number of Hellenistic works. The city was sacked and its artistic treasures taken to Rome, where the new style of these works soon replaced the Etruscan-Roman tradition that had prevailed until then. Shortly afterwards, in 133 BC, the Empire inherited the kingdom of Pergamon, where there was an original and thriving school of Hellenistic sculpture. The huge Pergamon Altar, the "Gallus committing suicide" or the dramatic group "Laocoön and his sons" were three of the key creations of this Hellenistic school. On the other hand, after Greece was conquered in 146 BC, most Greek artists settled in Rome, and many of them devoted themselves to making copies of Greek sculptures, which were very fashionable at the time in the capital of the Empire. Thus, numerous copies of Praxiteles, Lysippus and classical works of the 5th century BC were produced, giving rise to the Neo-Attic school of Rome, the first neoclassical movement in the history of art. However, between the end of the 2nd century BC and the beginning of the 1st century BC there was a change in this purist Greek trend, which culminated in the creation of a national school of sculpture in Rome, which produced works such as the Altar of Aenobarbus, which introduced a typically Roman narrative concept that became a chronicle of everyday life and, at the same time, of the success of its political model. This school would be the forerunner of the great imperial art of Augustus, under whose rule Rome became the most influential city in the Empire and also the new centre of Hellenistic culture, as Pergamon and Alexandria had been before it, attracting a large number of Greek artists and craftsmen. In the Augustan era Rome contributed to the continuity and renewal of a tradition that had already enjoyed centuries of prestige, and which had dictated the character of all art in the area.