Effaced: the missing noses of classical antiquity

Mark Bradley explores an important cross-cultural phenomenon. A display cabinet in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, exhibits scores of disembodied noses (and various other appendages) from its Greek and Roman sculpture collections. This macabre collection of body parts was assembled in 1981 out of marble and plaster noses that had been deliberately removed by the …

Roman noses

Mark Bradley sniffs out the significance of noses for Romans and others. Go back a hundred years or so, and well-to-do men and women in Berlin could be very conscious about their nose-shape. Anyone who had a potato nose, saddle nose or duckbill nose, or one that was wide, pointy, long, hook or slant had good …