Portrait of a Girl on a non-ancient statue of a peplophoros

Roman art

This portrait head, inserted in a non-ancient statue of a woman wearing a peplos (a peplophoros), portrays a girl with a serious gaze emphasised by large round eyes with thick eyelids and incised with shield-shaped pupils. She has a regular nose, small, closed mouth, round chin and stocky neck. Her hair is parted in the middle and pulled back in wavy bands. On the sides, it falls in long soft waves along the neck that are then pulled up and gathered in a flat, elliptical chignon at the nape, worn low in keeping with a style that was popular in the mid and late Severan period, in connection with the hairstyle worn by Sallustia Orbiana (225–229 CE), wife of Emperor Alexander Severus.

Object details

Commentary

This portrait head, inserted in a non-ancient statue of a peplophoros, portrays a girl with a serious gaze emphasised by large round eyes with thick eyelids and incised with shield-shaped pupils. She has strong eyebrows in the form of two long arcs, a regular nose, small, closed mouth, round chin and stocky neck A short curl escapes her elaborately styled hair near her exposed ears. Her hair is parted in the middle and arranged in regular, wavy locks gathered in a low, flat bun composed of distinct, horizontally overlapping braids at the nape. The arrangement of her hair, parted in the middle, brushed back into wavy locks, falls in long, soft waves along her neck that are then pulled up and crossed to form a low, flat, elliptical chignon. The bun of concentrically arranged braids was typical of women in the Severan family. Introduced in the ‘Leptis’ portrait type of Julia Domna, it remained the style of Severan hair throughout the first decades of the third century CE. More specifically, this type of Helmfrisur − first worn by Plautilla − was adopted by Julia Mesa and her daughters, Julia Soemia and Julia Mamea (Capitoline Museum, Stanza degli imperatori, inv. 457; see Fittschen, Zanker 1983, pp. 30–32, no. 33, pls 41–42), the mothers of, respectively, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus, the three wives of Elagabalus, Giulia Cornelia Paula, Giulia Aquilia Severa and Annia Faustina, and the young, unfortunate wife of Alexander, Sallustia  Orbiana, Augusta from 225 to 229, as attested by a portrait in the Louvre (see Kersauson 1996, p. 426, no. 197; on portraits of Orbiana in general, see Saletti 1997). The hairstyle of the Borghese sculpture seems closest to the latter, suggesting a date of about 230 CE.

In the modern period, probably when the new collection was installed in the Casino Pinciano, the head was inserted in a non-ancient statue of a woman wearing a Doric peplos (a statue type called a peplophoros). The arms are held out in an offering gesture inspired by an iconographic type that was very popular in ancient Roman sculpture workshops, especially during the early Julio-Claudian period and the Hadrianic age. It was then placed on a porphyry column in the Portico, where it was described for the first time in the Borghese Inventario Fidecommissario.

Jessica Clementi