[Breydel]

Originally Posted by searcher of truth

The difference with roman emperors is that we got only busts while in more recent italians (from the XVth century on) we have some contemporary portraits -not allways; for Leonardo for exemple we have virtually no contemporary portrait excepting maybe the self portrtait identified by MRS Luerssen-

There's however a most evident treachery by Günther with the case of Raphael, as he has chosen the portrait that fit best to his purpose instead of using Raphael Self-Portrait.
And i f you want to talk about written depictions yes; I have a concrete exemple : in the former edition of his web page ultra-nordicist Karl Earlson claimed Dante as a nordic of german descent. It's been long time since I don't visit his web page but I think he changed his exemple and he had no choice for, as a matter of fact at the time of Dante portraiture did not exist yet in western europe (it appeared only at the turn of the XIVth century) but we have instead a writen depiction of him by Boccaccio: " Our poet was of middle height; his face was long, his nose was aquiline, his jaw large, and his under lip protruding somewhat beyond the upper. His eyes rather large than small; his hair and beard thick, crisp, and black, and his countenance sad and pensive. His gait was grave and gentlemanlike, and his bearing, in public or private, wonderfully composed and polished. In meat and drink he was most temperate."

And if you want to talk about the Caesars it is true that most were light in pigmentation but if you read carefully Suetonius history you 'll sea that Julius who was the only one from True Patrician ascendense was black eyed while Augustus who was light eyed and lughtish borwn haired (and not golden haired as claimed by nordicists) as well as Nero who is described both as light eyed and blond haired, there families were at the begining they where from plebeian origin so these depictions on pigmentation may be are not as usufull for taking conclusions about the racial composition of each ancient roman society strata.

as most objective anthropologists concluded the light pigmentation in nothern italy isn't nordic in origin but alpinid dinarid along with the racial composition of the region, coon also noticed the mesocephalic/brachycephalic head form was admired in roman times