The 'Pseudo-Vitellius' in the Uffizi Gallery is one of the marble
portrait-busts belonging to the extensive modern series deriving from the so-called Grimani 'Pseudo-Vitellius' discovered in the early 16th century.
This article discusses antiquarian events of the Florentine sculpture, which dates back to at least 1666 when the portrait-head was mentioned in the inventory of the Casino di San Marco. The main theories of art scholars regarding its typological and chronological interpretation are also reviewed, since the portrait-bust seems to have been neither so famous or replicated as erroneously believed until now. Much evidence (archival and literary references, artistic and craft productions) confirming the popularity of the subject in the Medicean city is useful in better contextualising the Uffizi 'Pseudo-Vitellius' in the substantial series attested in Florence from the 16th to the 19th century as in the complex network of derivations and models produced on the basis of the so-called Grimani type as well. Amending previous misunderstandings, it has also been possible to appraise the different role played by the Grimani 'Pseudo-Vitellius' prototype and other sculptural types, in particular the Durazzo 'Pseudo-Vitellius' and the Albani-Capitoline 'Pseudo-Vitellius', as a model. In this regard, the case of the Genoese Durazzo 'Pseudo-Vitellius' is especially interesting. It has in fact been possible to identify various reproductions derived from it, and not from the Grimani type as argued in the past, and therefore re-establish the rightful place of the Durazzo 'Pseudo-Vitellius' among the most influential models, one that has been wrongly diminished by art scholars in the past.