Bust of a man

Ancient busts such as this one were often displayed on high shelves and formed a focal point of a scholar's study. Humanist Renaissance scholars, most so in Italy, were keen to link themsleves with the intellectual traditions of Greece and Rome, and paint themsleves as the guardians and inheritors of long-forgotten Classical schools of thought, though in fact 'the Ancients' had been always been held in the highest regard right through the entire medieval period, and right across Europe.