Facing up to Constantine: Reassessing the Stonegate Monumental Head from York

Abstract

A damaged and badly weathered stone head, discovered prior to 1823 in York, and interpreted as an early portrait of the emperor Constantine I, is here re-examined and identified as a modified image of an earlier, deified emperor, almost certainly Hadrian. A re-analysis of the image as it survives today further suggests that the recarving, into a likeness of Constantine, occurred after a.d. 312 and not, as widely believed, at the moment of Constantine's proclamation as emperor in York in a.d. 306.