To be serious, I think these tiny
hands were not really a stylistic
choice, but rather a practical necessity if wanting to display
hands as well as the
bust. The
bust itself is of course the main design element and focus of the
obverse, but given the desire to portray various
types of martial, consular, etc busts, it becomes necessary to also display
hands, and there's no room to do so in life-size proportion if the shoulder-and-up
bust is occupying the
bulk of the
reverse.
There's also a conflict in whether to display
hands in size proportional to the
head or proportional to the tiny/symbolic adjuncts, such as spears, they are there to support. Life sized
hands would make a spear held over the shoulder look like a toothpick, and since the
hands are just there as a necessity to support the adunct, they are necessarily scaled to make it look as
good as possible given the limited space.
There are exceptions of course - the more the
bust tends towards half-torso rather than just shoulders-up, the more possibility there is to display
hands in closer to realistic proportions relative to the
head. Also if there is no adjunct - nothing being held - then there is more space for the hand itself to be better proportioned as we see in some raised hand "
imperatorial gestus" busts.
See
IMP T
REX as an example - waist-up
bust with life size
hands!
Ben
