Portrait of a Woman on a modern bust

Roman art

This portrait sculpture, set on a modern bust, depicts a woman with soft, elegant features and hair parted in the middle, arranged in two neat, symmetrical bands on either side of her face.  Her wavy locks are gathered in a bun at the back of her head and fall gently over her shoulders. This hairstyle is reminiscent of early representations of Antonia Minor, daughter of Marcus Antoninus and Octavia, sister of Emperor Augustus, dating to the first decades of the first century CE.

In 1828, the bust was reported in the Palazzina Borghese, along with fifteen others, all placed on shelves.

Object details

Commentary

This sculpture is probably one of the busts that was reported the portico of the Palazzina Borghese in 1828: ‘In the Portico of the above-said Casino […] No. 16 Busts on as many shelves’ (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, Arch. Borghese 348, Galleria e Museo. Titoli diversi, fasc. 33, 1828, c. 6r). In 1893, Venturi reported a smaller number: ‘14 busts on shelves along the walls’ (p. 12). The first to mention the portrait on its own was Calza, in 1957, who described it as a ‘portrait of a woman with hair of the Antonia type’ (p. 13, no. 115). Moreno agreed with this identification, dating the work to 30 CE. He also specified that the right ear without a hole and the nose were restored, and argued that the net over the elaborately styled hair might have been originally gilded, a theory that we cannot verify today due to the location of the bust on a high shelf (Moreno, Viacava 2003, pp. 82–83, no. 35).

The portrait is set on a modern bust clothed in drapery with regular, rigid folds that fall in a V across the chest. The sleeves are fastened over the shoulders with a row of four circular buttons. The head is turned to the right and still preserves the long neck. The oval-shaped face has soft, full features. The brows are barely defined and frame that large eyes with clearly delineated eyelids and smooth irises. Part of the straight, linear nose is restored, and the small, full mouth is closed. The figure’s elegantly styled hair is parted in the middle and arranged in regular, wavy locks on either side of the face, covering the tops of the ears and gathered into a low bun at the nape of the neck, from which they fall freely over the shoulders.

The simple, neat hairstyle is reminiscent of the idealised hair of goddesses in the classical period and shares similarities with the official portraiture of Antonia Minor. Specifically, the Borghese portrait would seem to be in the mould of the second type identified by Polaschek, the ‘Schlichter Typus’, without a decorative band and small curls at the temples, datable to empress’s youth, in about 30 CE (1973 pp. 16–34). Boschung instead argued for a typological classification based on the existence of a single portrait type developed in the Augustan period and then modified, with slight variations in the hair and attributes (1993. p. 52). Research by Segenni stresses that, in imperial propaganda, official portraiture of the empress, daughter of Marcus Antoninus and Octavia (sister of Emperor Augustus) and wife of Drusus the younger (son of Livia), celebrated the values of stability and continuity for the whole dynasty, in portraits characterised by a dignified, reserved, irreproachable bearing that is amply attested in coin production (Segenni 1995, pp. 297–331).

There is another portrait of the empress in the Borghese Collection, in Room and datable to a later period (inv. LII), with a more elaborate hairstyle and small curls on the forehead. As for the present portrait, there is a similar one in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek that came from Tralles, another in the Museo Chiaramonti and, lastly, one in the Capitoline Museum’s Palazzo Nuovo, with a moderate fall of locks on either side of the face (Fittschen 1977, p. 60, note 2; Calza 1964, p. 39, no. 47, pl. 28; Baldassarri 2010, pp. 246–247, no .9).

Giulia Ciccarello