An interpretation of René Magritte's series La condition humaine underlines its anti-realistic warning. On that analogical basis, an approach to three of Cornelius Tacitus' protraits of emperors is provided, namely those of Galba, Tiberius, and Augustus. A common feature in these personalities is their particular difficulty to be represented in the static and univocal way required by literary portrait. The paper analyzes the rhetorical and ideological devices used by the artist to tackle that goal. As a counterpart, a circularity in the appropriation of ideological legacies is suggested, according to which forms that were designed by writers to describe characters in their works have historically moulded social representations of personality
