From the bestselling author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome , the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years 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, especially the “Twelve Caesars,” from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian. Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Neros fiddling while Rome burns. Beginning with the importance of imperial portraits in Roman politics, this richly illustrated book offers a tour through 2,000 years of art and cultural history, presenting a fresh look at works by artists from Memling and Mantegna to the nineteenth-century American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, as well as by generations of weavers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths, printers, and ceramicists. Rather than a story of a simple repetition of stable, blandly conservative images of imperial men and women, Twelve Caesars is an unexpected tale of changing identities, clueless or deliberate misidentifications, fakes, and often ambivalent representations of authority. From Beard’s reconstruction of Titian’s extraordinary lost Room of the Emperors to her reinterpretation of Henry VIII’s famous Caesarian tapestries, Twelve Caesars includes fascinating detective work and offers a gripping story of some of the most challenging and disturbing portraits of power ever created. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC "A Barnes & Noble Best History Book of the Year" "A Waterstones Best History Book of 2021" "A CapX Book of the Year" "One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Nonfiction Books of the Year" "One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Biographies of the Year" "A Library Journal Fall 2021 Nonfiction Must" "What better escape from the woes of our present day than rolling around in the intrigues of the Roman Empire? Naughty Caesars! Pictures too! Avidly I plunge in!" ― Margaret Atwood "A mesmerizing read." ---Michael Dirda, Washington Post "This deeply researched account explores how Roman art has shaped the Western world’s understanding of power for two millenniums, from ancient Roman imperial portraits to the work of the 19th-century American sculptor Edmonia Lewis." ― New York Times "Beard, a prolific author and a distinguished classical scholar, brilliantly describes the ways in which images of Roman emperors have influenced art, culture and politics for two millennia. . . . Twelve Caesars is a masterly demonstration of scholarship in a variety of fields, from republican Roman politics to Renaissance tapestry to contemporary British collage. Again and again, Ms. Beard gives us unexpected insights. . . . Twelve Caesars is wonderfully readable, with graceful prose and witty comments along the way." ---Barry Strauss, Wall Street Journal "This thoroughgoing survey examines the relationship between ancient imperial imagery and the modern visual imagination. . . . With handsome illustrations of coins, canvases, frescoes, and teacups, Beard brings the prestige and power of these emperors’ half-invented faces into tighter focus." ― The New Yorker " Twelve Caesars is fascinating and not only because its author writes so engagingly. Many years in the making, the world into which it will be born is not quite the same as the one in which it was conceived. Its preoccupations—essentially, it’s about the way that images of Roman emperors from Caesar to Domitian have influenced culture across the centuries—are suddenly and newly of the moment in a Britain that has become completely fixated with statues." ---Rachel Cooke, The Observer "A fantastic new book." ---Tom Holland, The Rest Is History "In [Beard's] work, the consumption of classical culture is as revealing as the culture itself." ---Josh Spero, Financial Times "[A] fascinating book, which embarks on a study of not just the Julio-Claudian dynasty of caesars made infamous by Suetonius and Robert Graves but also of their ubiquitous iconography—in statues, on coins, in paintings and sculpture. It’s an eye-catching field guide to these famous ancient rulers." ― Christian Science Monitor "Beard upends many of our assumptions by looking at how these rulers have been represented in art, from antiquity to the modern-day. It’s a clever and entertaining exercise in helping us reframe how we think about the distant past." ---Darragh Geraghty, Irish Times ​​​​​​​ "[A] rich disquisition on the Caesars’ visual representation. .