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Chapter 12
Roman Portraits
Jane Fejfer
At the beginning of his second book on painting, first published in 1435/6, the Italian
humanist Leon Battista Alberti wrote about the portrait that it “contains a divine force which
not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead
seem almost alive” (Spencer 1970, 52). Alberti knew his Cicero (Laelius On Friendship 7.23)
and was using him to persuade his reader of the importance of the portrait. However, the social
and aesthetic significance that portraiture was soon to achieve among elite patrons and “super‐
artists” in Renaissance Italy was emphatically different from the use of portraiture in Cicero’s
Rome. In the hierarchical Roman society, portraits were not a privilege of the elite, they were
not (usually) seen as improper claims to power or displays of excessive personal vanity, and they
were not associated with super‐artists. In the Roman period, having a portrait made was open
to a large part of society, ranging from the emperor to local magistrates, and even freedmen.
Portraiture was adopted and adapted across the regions of the vast Empire and played a crucial
role on the local level. However, just as importantly, it functioned as a signifier of the Empire’s
global culture of civic life. Even though the Romans took over portraiture and the honorific
statuary tradition from the Greeks, the publicly awarded and politically imbued honorific
­portrait statue took on a whole new dimension during the Roman period. It represented the
greatest honor for which a local citizen could hope, filled the public space of the Empire’s
­cities, and came to represent visions and ideals of honor and power that were universal and
valid all the way from the late Republic to the beginning of late antiquity. Portraits also became
common in houses and tombs, where they reminded the visitor of the owner’s distinction,
evoked the memory of long‐deceased family members, and served as exempla to the younger
generations.
Roman Portraiture: Fear of Oblivion and Anonymity?
The Romans saw falling into oblivion as an inevitable, natural process and were therefore
excessively concerned with constructing their identity (Flower 2006). Portraiture was ideally
suited to facilitate this desire for public prominence, as it pampered personal ambition and
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ensured eternal memory. In this chapter I shall focus on the circumstances of commissioning
and making portraits, on the contexts in which they were viewed, and on their agency in the
society that produced them. In doing so, I focus in particular on two aspects of portraiture:
first, materiality, a portrait’s technical and artistic tradition and visual language, its format, its
material, as well as the physical contexts of its display; second, the inscription that accompanied
it. Roman portraits were almost always accompanied by a text. The text may simply be a name
label or it may take the form of a long, mostly honorific inscription informing the viewer about
the subject’s rank, career, and family relations, as well as a variety of external details pertaining
to the wider circumstances of its erection. Image and text were inextricably bound together in
Roman portraiture. The portrait figure itself was the eye‐catcher that immediately engaged the
viewer, and challenged his or her mind to explore the individual. Faces have an immense
cognitive effect on the viewer and, even though the relationship between viewer and portrait
is “locked” because of the irresponsive and static character of the portrait image, the viewer
reads the face and sees through the eyes into the mind of the portrayed and finds at first glance
a being similar to him‐ or herself (Elgar and Campbell 2001).
In contrast, the large, well‐carved inscription written on the tall base on which the Roman
portrait figure was typically placed identified the patron, positioned him within the social
­hierarchy, and explained his role in politics and the euergetic system of this particular city. The
inscription distracted the viewer from closer involvement with the image and encouraged him
or her to read the patron’s roles into his physical appearance: the viewer inevitably correlated
the patron’s written biography with the image, and its styling was expanded and perceived
accordingly. Portrait inscriptions were very formulaic, naming the patron in the dative (in
Greek in the accusative) and the dedicator in the nominative, and informing the beholder that
the statue was set up in honor of the portrayed, usually by a city council. The statue therefore
describes a social transaction and bond between dedicator and recipient, and was part of the
social network, of the history, memory, and identity of the city (Ma 2007). Even in their
­formulaic form, inscriptions were expected to clarify details about social relations and aspects
of the patron that could not be deduced from the image alone. In doing so, they could even
contradict the message of the image to some extent and thus account for a multifaceted identity of the patron (Fejfer 2008, 30). Moreover, by telling the viewer whether she or he was
dealing with a magistrate informing the public, a priest performing a sacrifice, a benefactor, and
so on, the inscription set out the portrait’s interaction with its environment, which was further
enhanced by the western practice of raising the statue up on a tall base to a total height of
about 3 meters (Greek statue bases were usually low and wide). On occasion, inscriptions
specify who paid for the statue, of what material the statue was made, and in what particular
location and for which particular reason it was set up. These important details added further to
the impact of the statue, just as they acted to inform their viewers how they could earn such a
statue for themselves.
The inscription also served to secure the identification of the person portrayed in the long
term. When displayed in the public spaces among several other portraits, which were all dressed
in the same standard set of costumes, the honorific statue would only on a very general level be
part of the city’s history and memory. The inscription identified by name both public and private
portraits, and secured a continued impact of the individualized portrait. Portraits lose their
agency when they lose their identification (Aristotle, Poetics 1448b.15; Dillon 2006, 1–8; Banville
2010). This may be just as true for the Roman as it is for the modern era: for the Imagined Lives
exhibition arranged by the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2010/11, a number of well‐
known writers were asked to invent stories about some of the anonymous p
­ ortrait sitters represented in the gallery’s paintings, in order to spark new interest in these ­otherwise unnoticed
artworks. On a related note, Roman portraits very rarely carried artists’ signatures, which could
have raised their aesthetic value or made them collectables; although they are sometimes praised
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in literary testimonia as adornment on the cityscape, they ­therefore only continued to attract real
interest when the sitter was known, as the artist was anonymous.
Modern research on the nature of Roman portraiture relies heavily on these inscriptions.
More often than the sculptures themselves, they were left in situ, and they survive in much
larger numbers than the former. Even though most portraits can no longer be associated with
their physical context or inscriptions, and can therefore primarily be studied as elements in the
general evolution of portrait styles and self‐representation, their former intricate connection
allows for general conclusions regarding portrait practices in the wider socio‐historical context.
The long inscription CIL XIV 353, for instance, was cut into a base carrying a (now lost)
equestrian statue set up in the forum of Ostia by the city council in honor of the equester
­publicus Fabius Hermogenes (Fejfer 2008, 66–68). Although it prioritizes Hermogenes and
his benefactions, the city is the prime agent responding to Hermogenes’ generosity. The
­benefactions moved the city not only to commission a statue, but also to choose a specific kind
of statue and location, and thus a specific audience. Hermogenes himself (and the available
statue formats) served as a prototype for the statue, which then exerted agency on the viewer
in the forum. Emphasis is not on the portrait as a work of art or a product of a famous sculptor,
but on the social interaction between city and benefactor, which materialized in Hermogenes’
equestrian statue (see Whitley 2003/4 and the Guide to further reading).
Inscriptions can be analyzed statistically. They provide information about the social status of
patrons awarded honorific statues in a typical Roman city, and thus tell us at least in general terms
who the surviving portraits represented. In Rome after the Republic, there is hardly any ­epigraphic
evidence for recipients who were not part of the imperial household, suggesting that the public
spaces in the capital became mainly reserved for imperial representation, and that the portraits of
private people were relegated to their houses and villas (Alföldy 2001). In provincial cities across
the huge Empire the situation was totally different (Figure 12.1). In Italian m
­ unicipia, the vast
majority of inscriptions for honorific statues refer to local m
­ agistrates and benefactors, a situation
that can also be observed in other parts of the Empire. Only about 10 percent of those honored
were imperial officials. Senatorial and local women make up just over 10 percent. Portraits of the
emperor constituted 10–20 percent, judging from evidence from other parts of the Empire. Even
though these figures vary in different parts of the Empire, the general trend is clear: portraits
were very much bound up in local history (Smith et al. 2006).
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Figure 12.1 Histogram showing the social make‐up of first‐ to third‐century CE portrait inscriptions
from Italian municipia. © J. Fejfer.
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Imperial officials and senators were fairly automatically awarded a statue, but local people
earned their portrait statues primarily as a reward for pecuniary or other benefactions donated
to the upkeep of the city. Among local citizens, competition for honorific statues, preferably
to be displayed in the most conspicuous and busy public space (celeberrimo or oculatissimo
loco), was tough and could demand continuous benefactions; sometimes the benefactor even
had to wait for his statue until after he had passed away. However, the statue could have a long
­biography: epigraphic evidence shows that a lasting effect in city life after the inauguration
ceremonies was desired. Some inscriptions lay down precisely how the statue was to be
anointed with perfume or adorned with garlands of flowers and crowns on particular ­occasions,
and how distributions of food and money had to take place regularly in front of it, sometimes
“forever” (Fejfer 2008, 63–72). The statues were stand‐ins for the benefactors, ensuring that
their ­persona was remembered and that they continued to have a place in local city life. Such
stipulations also served to prevent the city from moving, removing, or even reusing statues,
which happened frequently nonetheless. Honorific portraiture was therefore a crucial way for
local people to shape their identities and histories, but the mingling with portraits of emperors
and metropolitan officials in each city of the Empire placed portraiture at the center of a
global, Empire‐wide culture of civic performance, and shared values of honor, status, and
identity.
Roman Portraiture: Likeness or Manipulation?
Cognitive neuroscience suggests that the first thing we concentrate on when confronted with
another human being is the face (Bruce and Young 1998). How does this deeply imbedded
human habit work with Roman portraits? Clearly, the Romans put much emphasis on the
head as the carrier of a person’s identity. Roman portrait heads in marble, by far the most
commonly surviving material from which portraits were made, were often cut separately and
inserted into the statue or bust. This and the introduction of the bust format at the end of the
Republican period have supported the notion of the Roman portrait head as a separate self‐
contained r­ epresentation, where the support added very little to the meaning of the image.
The identity of the person was heavily associated with the head and face. This is supported by
the specific targeting of the face of a Roman portrait statue when the public deployed
­damnatio memoriae, the obliteration of memory inflicted on public persons who had fallen
into disgrace (Flower 2006; Varner 2004), as well as by the extensive reuse of portrait heads
of “good” emperors by late antique emperors (Constantine reused those of Hadrian), suggesting that the identity embedded in the portrait could even be passed on when the latter
was recarved (Prusac 2011, 69–72). We also learn from descriptions of these actions that the
portraits were an embodiment of or a stand‐in for the person they represented (Vout 2008,
155). The aspect of the portrait statue as stand‐in for those not present is further supported
by numerous literary sources, and indeed absence, passion, and longing are an explanation
adduced by some authors for the inception and popularity of portraits in Rome (e.g., Pliny,
Natural History 35.43.151).
What we do not learn from the sources is whether the Roman viewers saw physiognomy
and facial expression in portraits as a point of departure for psychological interpretations.
Probably they did not. I have already noted the crucial role of the inscription, and even the
bust, which was suitable for display in more intimate spaces, and in which dress code and
attributes c­ ontributed little to the overall message, is probably a response to the awareness
of the power of the visual exemplary self, and not—at least not primarily—introduced for
solitary introspective self‐contemplation (Bartsch 2006). Portrait heads on busts do
not usually boast more individuality or more refined techniques than those portraits on
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full‐figure honorific statues. Presented elegantly with solely a name tag, the bust supported
the portrait head, but it was not as strongly imbued with social and hierarchical aspects as
the honorific statue: the bust format left it open to the viewer to construct the patron’s
status and role.
This raises questions about likeness. To what extent did the portrait image, for which the
most common Latin words were imago, simulacrum, voltus, and statua, mimic the actual
appearance of the person? The normative format of the Roman portrait was the honorific
statue, which originated in the Greek tradition of honorific statuary. However, Roman ­portrait
heads do not fit standardized iconographic types representing specific categories of persons,
as Greek ones do. From the late Republic onwards, they show great variety in physiognomic
details (Zanker 1995). Literary sources suggest that mimēsis or similarity between image and
person was relevant (Lucian, Essays in Portraiture Defended 6; Pliny, Letters 3.10.6; Arrian,
Periplus of the Euxine Sea 1), but to what extent was it important? First, there is probably not
a universal answer, as some portraits may describe the real features of the sitter carefully, while
others do not; and second, Republican Romans were not used to exact copying, but rather to
recognition memory (Small 2008). Today we expect a copy to be exact, but this was not
­necessarily expected by the Romans. It is not until the early imperial period, when multiple
copies of imperial portraits were commissioned, that exact replication became common; and
even in this process there was substantial variation among individual copies, especially during
the Early Empire. Moreover, a number of female portraits raise doubts as to whether they are
portraits of “real” persons or images of personifications. While some female portraits do boast
strong ­physiognomic characteristics, most women were represented with little physiognomic
individuality, so that we often wonder whether we are dealing with a real woman or a so‐called
ideal statue. This demonstrates how physiognomy was part of a social construction of an
individual into personhood, and that likeness was a matter of choice, dependent on a number
of factors that were determined by the patron, the sculptor, the person or institution that
commissioned the image, and the target audience. Exact copying of a person’s real features
was not necessarily crucial for the message. What mattered was that the portrait passed as a
likeness; that the sculptor in his artistic investigation of the individual could refer to the sitter
by means of style and seemingly realistic details; that the sculptor was able to bind the patron
to the ­portrait, “­animate” it, and imbue it with personhood in such a way that it was
­convincing, by means of constructed or real visual faithfulness.
Even if we disregard the question of whether the physiognomic characteristics of Roman
portraits were true to life or not, key issues remain unresolved. When and where did this new
trend toward a seemingly veristic style first appear and originate? What provoked its appearance
and caused its further development in Republican, and especially in late Republican, Roman
portraiture? And, last but not least, how specifically Roman is it really? The so‐called death‐
mask theory, which saw the Roman portrait as a true‐to‐life, non‐manipulating medium that
originated in the practice of taking death masks, has now been discarded. Depending on their
dating of the first appearance of verism, and on whether they believe verism to be part of a
wider Hellenistic phenomenon that applied to portraits of Greeks as well as Romans, or a
­specifically Roman phenomenon, scholarly explanations include a wide range of assumptions:
that verism originated from a new interest in psychology; an increasing interest in individualism; a reflection of how the Greeks perceived the Romans; a way to define the relationship
between Greek clients and their Roman patrons; and the Romans’ attempt to define ­themselves
against the many regions of the Empire, to name but a few (Rose 2008). Significantly, imagines
maiorum, the ancestral wax masks described by Pliny (Natural History 35.2.6) and Polybius
(6.53.6) as insignia of the aristocratic families in Rome (not to be confused with death masks),
have recently reentered the discussion as evidence for verism being a specifically Roman
phenomenon (Rose 2008; Papini 2011).
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There is now much evidence to suggest that the origin of the veristic style should be placed
in the late third century BCE Greek world, and that the style was applied as a broad Hellenistic
phenomenon. Rather than expressing diverse ethnic, cultural, social, or even personal
­identities, it was used to express shared civic values; its origin must be understood in relationship to a “boom” in the production of portrait statues set up to benefactors in the third and
second centuries in the Hellenistic Greek cities (Ma 2007). While these portraits have almost
­completely been lost, the inscriptions on their bases survive. They usually first name the
­dedicating body in the nominative, followed by the name of the recipient in the accusative,
describing a social transaction between city and recipient: the portrait statue is a symbol of the
relation between city and benefactor. The statue is absorbed into the general history and
social network of the city and the collective civic values override the individual. For this
purpose, a portrait style was needed that neither suggested extraordinary or even divine
honors as the heroic youthful images of Hellenistic kings and leaders do, nor was too closely
associated with specific typological models such as that of philosophers. It is therefore p
­ lausible
to connect the introduction of verism to this new development in the honorific tradition,
which was closely linked to the euergetic systems in the Greek cities. Verism dwells on the
particular, but here it expressed the general, and it played a part in the process of social
­transaction between city and benefactor.
As indicated earlier, when confronted with a veristic portrait of a contemporary sitter, the
viewer’s first reaction is that this is a person like oneself. It encourages reflection about oneself.
Idealized portraits, on the contrary, alienate the beholder. Verism worked to reduce distance
between viewer and image (von den Hoff 2007), thereby encouraging the important exchange
of benefactions on which the cities were so dependent. As many second‐century BCE statue
bases carry artists’ signatures, the role of the sculptor should not be underestimated in this
process of formulating personhood in a new way. The veristic portrait does not say I, it says
YOU and ME. Those who received extraordinary honors stood out from the rest not due to
the portrait styles, but due to body modes (the most extraordinary being heroic nudity), due
to the spot where they were set up, and sometimes due to the size and material from which
they were made (Fejfer, forthcoming).
It is not until the very late Republican period that the multiple varieties of apparent verisimilitude developed further, into sometimes brutal depictions of bald or thin‐haired old men
with wrinkles, sagging skin, toothless mouths, warts, and so on. This is an Italic portrait style
encountered in Italic cities, but also found in Rome itself (Zanker 1976 and 1995; Gruen
1993, 161–170). It represents a formal redirection from the Hellenistic portrait style, and it
was relevant only for a short period (Figure 12.2). It coincided chronologically with the spread
of the honorific habit to the cities in Italy, and with Sulla’s (consul in 88 and 80 BCE) policies
that introduced, among other things, a much larger senate, which took in new Italic members.
They stood outside the old aristocracy, and therefore possibly preferred to relate in their
­portrait styles to the honorific and commemorative portrait tradition of the Italic cities. It also
coincided with the exploitation of marble: the use of marble had become much more widespread, with easy access to the high‐quality white marble in the quarries at Luni. Marble took
polychrome paint much more easily and naturalistically than bronze, which was either left in its
natural golden‐brown color or gilded all over, and restricted the use of color to eyes, eyebrows,
and lips inlaid in different materials. Bronze, therefore, could not create the same illusion of
naturalism as painted marble could. When painted, these late Republican marble portraits may
have made reference to the realistic wax images of the Roman nobility. Due to its apparent
visual faithfulness, the extreme veristic style also promoted deeply imbedded Roman values of
gravitas and severitas that were obtained through life‐long experience that showed on the face
(Giuliani 1986).
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Figure 12.2 Late Republican portrait of a wrinkled old man. Osimo, Palazzo Comunale. Photo: Rossa,
Neg. DAI‐Rom 75.1051.
Portrait Styles, Materials, and Chronology
Portrait styles of the second and early first centuries BCE are best known from the Roman east.
Very few portraits from the west can be safely dated to that period, and it is uncertain just how
widespread the honorific statuary habit generally was in Rome during the second century.
Evidence is almost exclusively literary and much later (cf. the famous passage in Pliny, Natural
History 34.14.30 on the clearing of the Forum in 158 BCE from portrait statues not approved
by the Senate and the Roman people). From the first century BCE we are on much safer ground.
Two distinct portrait styles can be identified: one that continued to draw distantly on the
Hellenistic traditions, an example of which is provided by a portrait type identified as the poet of
New Comedy, Poseidippos (Fittschen 1992). In the Roman context, however, this Hellenistic
portrait style was often combined with body types showing heroic nudity, and was probably used
for members of the high aristocracy, perhaps in their role as military leaders (Zanker 1983, 258).
The other direction, the extreme verism described earlier, appeared ­during the very late Republic,
and those portrait heads were often combined with togate statues and thus probably represented
a much wider social group, ranging from high office holders to freedmen.
The extreme veristic style continued into the Augustan period, when it was eventually
­relinquished and most patrons preferred to follow the new, youthful and idealized portrait style
of the princeps. The portraits of the emperor (and the empress) almost immediately became
the iconic and unifying images to which the citizens of the Empire related, and which they
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imitated in their own images as a means of competing with their superior(s). Whether the
ensuing rapidly changing, period‐specific portrait styles actually originated at the imperial
court or were created among the public and then also chosen by the emperors, such Empire‐
wide waves of fashion were only possible because of the efficient distribution, acceptance, and
unifying impact of the imperial portrait.
Although strong physiognomy with emphasis on old age continued to be deployed
­occasionally among private, non‐imperial patrons, it lost in importance due to a new emphasis
on hairstyles and the increased artistic skill in rendering hair. The ever‐changing hairstyles make
the portrait our best source for the dating of Roman art. However, not everybody followed the
fashions publicized by the emperor. There were always choices, and by choosing old‐fashioned
styles, hair even participated in the ongoing negotiation with the past or even the specific
­identity conferred by ancestry. Hairstyles could therefore express not only values shared with
the emperor, but also specific personal or local identities (Smith 1998). Local preferences were
not always limited to specific formal predilections, but could extend to aesthetic and technical
­preferences and traditions. This is most significant during the second century CE, when metropolitan Roman portraits were made with excessive use of the drill, a technique and aesthetic
that did not find much appeal in the Roman east, where carving and modeling persisted.
Emperors of the first and second centuries CE usually had lots of hair and were either youthful or of mature age. Nevertheless, there were a few exceptions, such as Vespasian. His first
portrait type shows him as fat, old, wrinkled, toothless with sagging mouth, and almost bald,
and the type was no doubt created in order to distance him from his predecessor Nero, who
was represented with a long, luxurious hairstyle (Schneider 2003). Without any hair to support
the characterization and to define the typological elements of the first type, the sculptor had
opted for a very strong and characteristic physiognomy, which the viewer might have perceived
almost as a caricature in a period when age could be indicated more subtly by paint (Figure 12.3).
With age, the color not only of hair but also of skin turned gray.
Such sophisticated age differentiation, characteristic of the so‐called mummy portraits, the
production of which commenced around the middle of the first century CE (Borg 1996,
29–30), was also applied to the three‐dimensional marble portraits, and added strongly to their
expression. However, in most areas bronze, and gilded bronze in particular, remained the most
honorable and most used material for the public honorific statue at least into the third century
CE, to judge from the statue bases that once bore them. This was probably because bronze was
closely associated with statues of gods, and because its use for honorific statues went back a
long time (Pliny, Natural History 34.9.15). Bronze echoed public honor and importance, but
one should not underestimate the fact that its surface was also extremely durable and suitable
for outdoor display. A bronze statue was better suited to weather and being defiled by swallows
and other birds that settled on them (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortations to the Greeks 4.46),
and bronze could easily be recycled, even for use as chamber pots (Juvenal, Satires 10.62–64
on Sejanus’ images). Only when gilded did it need to be regularly freshened up. Yet, in the
course of the first century and in particular during the second century CE, portrait styles
became increasingly dependent on marble (and paint) to unfold the full potential of their
design (Smith 1998, 62; Figure 12.4). The strong contrasts of light and shadow achieved by
deeply drilled channels and deep undercuttings in the rough hair, highly polished skin, and
drilled pupils and irises, all colored, did not work well in bronze. Second‐century CE authors
talk about a techne that deceived the viewers and could make them fall in love with images
(Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 4.51).
This extremely time‐consuming drilling and polishing technique continued to be applied
throughout the third century. Simultaneously, during the second part of the second and the
third centuries CE, the bust format became increasingly popular. This may be linked to a
growing awareness of “selfhood,” but it certainly also suggests a shift in civic representation that
led away from public attention and toward display in private spaces. Technical developments,
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Figure 12.3 So‐called mummy portrait of a man with gray hair from Hawara in the Fayum. London, British
Museum, inv. EA74715. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum. (Please see the insert for color details).
Figure 12.4 Antonine male bust boasting highly polished skin and deeply drilled hair. Teramo, Museo
Civico. Deposito della Scuola. Photo: Hutzel, Neg. DAI‐ Rom 94.1338.
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social changes alongside ideological concerns, as well as notions of status and identity, local
versus global concerns, personal preferences, and economic potential were therefore behind the
properties and choices of both material and format.
Imperial portraiture was intended to project the cardinal ideals of each individual emperor. The
ideological messages of imperial portrait types were designed to be comprehensible to the
Empire’s vast and disparate population, which responded by copying the design in their own
portraits, accepting the image of the emperor as a unifying icon. Emperor worship inevitably
imbued the emperor with a super‐human quality, but his portrait, which was styled according to
the fashion of the day and combined with body types in the same attire as that of his fellow
­citizens, could blend in with any other honorific statue. However, the emperor’s extraordinary
position could just as easily be stressed by adding to his portrait attributes exclusive to him, such
as the corona civica and the corona radiata, by colossal size, or simply by displaying the statue in
a particular context. For most inhabitants of the Empire, dialogue with the emperor took place
via his statues. It was important that everybody participated in this exchange, and the portraits of
the emperor were standardized accordingly so that he was recognizable all over the vast expanse
of the Empire.
We can assume that such general ideological statements and recognizable features would
have had the greatest impact if they remained permanent and stable, rather than being continuously revised. However, most emperors and empresses were indeed represented in several
different portrait types. Some types were merely minor revisions of a previous one, while others
were major revisions. Why is that so? Most scholars favor the “event cause”; that is, the assumption that each new type was conceived by a court sculptor, and distributed for replication on
coins and in plastic art, to celebrate important events in the course of the emperor’s reign. The
date of each of these new types is then usually established or supported by numismatic ­evidence.
However, the traditional dating of imperial portrait types does not always stand up to scrutiny,
and it has therefore been necessary to point to other events during the reign of various emperors
(hitherto considered unimportant) to explain the new types. This has not been difficult, as
there were several events each year from which to pick and choose. If we leave aside the
question of whether the emperor was interested at all in continuous event‐driven celebrations
of his reign, the more important question to ask is whether a hardly noticeable change in a
portrait style should really be interpreted as a celebration of an important event. This seems a
little far‐fetched. What is more, the “event” explanation depends on a perception of imperial
rulership as a strictly top‐down model of control, which positions the emperor as the inventor
of the ideals and ideas behind his portrait, and as responsible for its production and distribution. This model leaves little room for flexibility and for exchange with private people and their
portraits. Surely, some imperial portrait types might have been conceived in connection with
an event, but it is difficult to see the “event cause” as the overall general explanation. The
changing portrait types of the emperor could easily be explained within a framework of
­sculptural workshops that were continuously engaged in developing, refining, and doing their
best for the emperor’s image. This is particularly apparent in the portraiture of Octavian/
Augustus. Five different portrait types of the first princeps have been identified, but only two
of those, the so‐called Actium and Prima Porta types, found approval and were copied and
distributed widely (Boschung 1993).
Roman men across the Empire imitated the image of the emperor, but due to the latter’s
characteristic physiognomy and strict typology of hairstyle, the viewer was usually able to
­distinguish between the two even when the context did not support an identification. This is
different in the case of females. Roman women, both empresses and private women, were
­usually highly idealized in their statuary representation. Individuality was suppressed in favor
of evenly proportioned and youthful faces; empresses wore hairstyles identical to those of
private women, and there were no specific attributes (except for the diadem during the early
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imperial period) that identified a woman as an empress. This similarity between the empress
and her fellow elite women was, it seems, intentional, and played an important part in constructing the imperial household as an ideal Roman family in which the empress constituted
the connection to private life and a mediator of Rome’s elite family values (Figures 12.5–12.6).
Ideals of female beauty with youthful, harmoniously proportioned facial features, and fresh,
wrinkle‐free skin were timeless, and only the ever‐changing fashion of hairstyles characterized
the woman as real. Yet, the hair of civilized, elite Roman women was always carefully styled and
kept under control in buns, plaits, rows of small regular curls, and sometimes even under a net.
A woman’s elegant hairstyle was perceived as a symbol of the civilized world. Long, unfettered
hair signaled a situation out of control, and was worn by women in mourning, or by foreigners
(Bartman 2001).
Nevertheless, there were alternatives to idealized beauty. Some portraits of private women
boast strong signs of age using the same formal indications as the male portraits. This styling
was no doubt perceived as positive and appropriate for a specific context, for example when the
ancestral role of the woman was emphasized. The overall tendency in Roman female portraits,
though, is that ideal beauty was more important for a woman’s personhood than her actual age
or appearance. Due to the sameness obtained through suppressed physiognomy, identical
­hairstyles, and body types, Roman empresses and private elite women were neither too public,
nor too individual, nor too conspicuous.
Figure 12.5 Portrait of empress Sabina found in Perge, Asia Minor. Antalya, Museum, inv. A3066
(head) and A3086 (body). Photo: Gregor Borg.
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Figure 12.6 Portrait of the local benefactress Plancia Magna from Perge styled like the empress Sabina.
Antalya, Museum, inv. A3459. Photo: Gregor Borg.
Statuary Formats, Body Types, and Clothing: Social
Markers, Role Models, or Fashion?
Three‐dimensional Roman portraits were always presented on a support in the form of a bust,
herm, or full‐figure statue. Because many Roman portrait heads were made separately for later
insertion into these formats, head and support were often separated subsequently. The heads
ended up adorning museum galleries, where they are displayed “amputated” at the base of the
neck, or restored with a modern bust. Since the Renaissance, the bust has been perceived as
the quintessentially Roman portrait format. However, as discussed earlier, in the Roman period
the normative format was the full‐figure, about or slightly over lifesize, honorific statue. This
was most commonly a standing figure, rarely an equestrian statue, and even more rarely a
seated figure. All three versions, of which the equestrian statue was the most prestigious, could
be awarded as honorific statues for emperors as well as private people, but they were also used
to commemorate patrons in tombs, houses, or villas.
The way in which these statues were clothed depended on a number of factors. Roman
clothing has attracted much attention in scholarship during the last decades, as it is considered
an important part of the statuary representation, and a key to understanding rank, social status,
identity, and gender (Edmondson and Keith 2008). There is much evidence for the Romans’
Roman Portraits
245
attitudes toward clothing in the literary sources, but there is debate over how the visual
­representations relate to these real dress types; most notably, whether the costumes worn in
statuary representations reflect what people actually wore. Most men in the Roman east
continued to wear the traditional Greek himation, while men in the west were typically shown
in one of three different costumes: the cuirass, nude, and the toga (Smith 1998; Cadario
2011). Each of these costumes represented a specific basic model—that is, high political and
military status, extraordinary honor, or excellent citizenship—but could also take on further
and much more specific meanings depending on their context. During the Republican period
nudity and other divine guises as well as the cuirass were worn by generals and politicians as
signs of outstanding, even super‐human achievements, but during the imperial period, when
displayed in public spaces, these costumes were reserved for members of the imperial family
and very few high officials. In people’s houses, villas, and tombs, other rules applied and
­freedmen typically preferred the divine guise for their tomb statues. The toga and himation,
however, were the typical civilian costumes and distinct markers of cultural identity, especially
the toga, which could be worn only by Roman citizens and could, in combination with rank‐
defining footwear and stripes, become a strong symbol of political potency.
In contrast to male statues, the repertoire of statue bodies for women was much more varied,
and none of the female body types denoted a specific public role (Alexandridis 2010). Only a
woman’s marital status was sometimes stressed by the addition of the long stola. All statuary
types, except for nude ones occasionally used to commemorate women in tombs, wore the
same pieces of garment, a chiton and mantle. The garments were draped in various ways,
­sometimes revealing, sometimes hiding the woman’s body beneath, and body postures could
be open or closed (Trimble 2011 on the Large Herculanean Woman type). Yet, all of these
statuary types were copies or variations of much earlier Greek statues of goddesses set up over
long periods in sanctuaries and temples across the Empire, including Rome. The only difference
in bodily depictions of goddesses and depictions of “real” Roman women was the occasional
addition of closed Roman shoes instead of Greek sandals, and of course the portrait head.
Devoid of any jewelry and probably dressed very differently from “real” Roman women, these
female statues most likely alienated the viewer, creating a large gap between the women of the
city and the few who received an honorific statue, and thereby reducing the risk of jeopardizing
social structures and gender roles. Perhaps the different kinds of costumes in which women
were usually depicted in the bust format reflected what women really wore.
The abbreviated bust and herm formats had appeared by the end of the Republic (Fejfer
2008, 237–239). The herm, popular for representations of cultural figures throughout the
Roman period, was used for contemporary patrons only for a very short time, whereas the bust
increased significantly in both popularity and size during the early and high Empire. In its early
phase, from the late first century BCE to the later first century CE, the small bust piece
­functioned as a support for the head that left it up to the viewer to construct the portrayed
person’s social identity, but with the gradually increasing size of the breast pieces the bust
became more status conscious. By the late second century, it occasionally included both arms,
with the hands sometimes holding an object. Although busts have been found in public
­settings, they were much more common in private spaces, suitable for display in houses, villas,
and tombs, where they were placed on wall brackets or tables, or in niches where their surface
color was protected against the weather, and where they could be appreciated up close
(Figure 12.7). As the bust format spread across the Empire in the course of the late first
century CE, it probably quickly became associated with metropolitan style and elegance, and
was easily accommodated into the marble‐adorned architectural spaces.
Most male busts were nude or dressed in paludamentum or cuirass until the late second
century CE, when busts also began to depict the toga, in particular the formal so‐called
­contabulated toga, the most characteristic feature of which is a broad band of stacked folds
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Figure 12.7 Busts on high bust feet of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva displayed on a table. Section of a
black‐and‐white mosaic in situ in the Villa of Lucius Verus at Aqua Traversa. The mosaic may show funerary games (according to Emmanuela Caserta). Photo: By permission of Ministero dei beni e elle attivita
culturali e del turismo – Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Roma.
running across the chest, suitable for colored ornamentation. It was introduced in the late
second century CE and partly replaced the old early imperial toga. What caused the introduction of the contabulated toga? No doubt the traditional toga, previously so closely linked to
Roman identity, had lost its iconic significance after 212 CE when Caracalla gave citizenship to
free men across the empire, and the garment could be worn by almost all free men. The
­contabulated toga, however, was very rare in full‐figure (honorific) statues, suggesting that it
could only be worn by very high officials.
All of these factors—the growing popularity of the bust, its increasing size that could
­accommodate arms and hand‐held attributes, the marble polishing techniques that allowed for
sophisticated coloring and were therefore not particularly suitable for outdoor public display,
and the popularity of the toga costume for busts—seem closely interlinked with a dramatic
change in civic representational habits. During the course of the early third century, the
quantity of honorific statues declined significantly throughout most of the Empire (Figure 12.8),
with the result that only high officials continued to be awarded statues. The reasons for this
change in representational habits are not clear‐cut (Borg and Witschel 2001). Probably, c­ itizens
were no longer interested in constructing large‐scale public buildings and monuments, but
now preferred to finance ephemeral performances such as games (Borg and Witschel 2001).
The few remaining full‐figure statues wearing the contabulated toga represented the small
247
Roman Portraits
Total honorands
20
15
10
5
0
70
60
50
Total honorands 3rd
in detail
1st half 2nd half
40
30
20
10
0
1st century AD
2nd century AD
3rd century AD
Figure 12.8 Histogram showing the chronological distribution of first‐ to third‐century CE portrait
inscriptions from Italian municipia. © J. Fejfer.
number of high officials who were still being honored with a statue, including senators with
high consular offices, whereas most citizens were now represented in the bust format and
­displayed primarily in private spaces.
Portraits in Context
Dedicatory practices suggest that there were two basic aspects of the Roman portrait: a public
honorific and a private commemorative one. These were mirrored by the place where the
­portrait was set up, by its format (bust or statue), its size (ranging from miniature to colossal),
and its material. There is some evidence that certain styles, types of portraits, and qualities were
preferred for specific contexts (e.g., high‐quality busts from villas, divine guises in tombs, and
so on), but Roman portraits rarely show even the most basic emotions of happiness, sadness,
anger, and disgust. This makes the context in which the portrait was viewed all the more
important, and it is why the same type of portrait acquired different meanings in different
­contexts. Context had the power of raising expectations: a portrait of the emperor placed in a
shrine devoted to emperor worship was more likely to connote divinity than when the same
portrait type was displayed in a basilica where it presided over law courts and exuded authority.
The same portrait type may appear mournful in the tomb, and authoritative and competent in
the forum. Portraits of the reigning emperor were expected to feature in certain prominent
public spaces in the empire’s cities, just as portraits of local office‐holders and benefactors were
expected to stand near the portraits of the ruler. Portraits were never viewed in isolation,
because their spatial context was the frame for specific activities and rituals, whether cultic,
political, commercial, or commemorative. Obviously, the portraits were not only viewed ­during
the course of those activities, by their sheer presence they became agents within them: the
­portraits influenced the atmosphere of these spaces; they influenced how the spaces were used
and perceived, just as the spaces framed how a specific portrait was viewed. Neither a local nor
a foreign viewer was ever lost—he or she knew exactly who the city’s most important men and
women were, because they were the ones represented in the honorific statues.
Recent studies of regional differences as well as of specific archaeological contexts have
­demonstrated how closely portraits were embedded in civic life (Smith et al. 2006; Fejfer
2008), and further investigations along those lines will strongly increase our understanding of
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Jane Fejfer
how relations of power worked on both a global and local level, and of how gender and
cultural identities were negotiated through the portrait medium. At the same time, attention
has been drawn to the fact that technical aspects of production are not merely a reflection of
practicalities or autonomous stylistic developments, but form part of the messages conveyed
by the portraits. Scientific methods are being applied for investigating the significance of
added paint (Østergaard 2010), and new insights into how ancient techniques and styles
developed lead to a better understanding of social reality and practice, and of a world in which
materials and their technical execution played an active role in people’s lives. These new
­developments pose important questions about the relationship between technique and social
practice: for i­nstance, whether the highly polished facial skin of late second‐ and early third‐
century portraits should be understood as careful preparation for the application of sophisticated painting techniques. In my opinion this is likely, and may have become d
­ esirable,
because the honorific habit shifted from the public sphere with its awarded honorific statues,
to the private sphere with its busts that were displayed in a sheltered and more intimate
­context. There are also a number of what I would call paradoxes in the iconography and
­styling of Roman portraiture: the contrast between female fashion hairstyles and idealized
faces and bodies; between veristic portrait heads and standard body types; and between veristic
and idealized portraits. These were paradoxes or contrasts that the Romans deliberately
­produced in their portraits (some of them have been the subject of recent studies: cf. Hallett
2005); models adapted from other disciplines, as for example the linguistic code‐switching
model (Wallace‐Hadrill 1998; Winther‐Jacobsen 2013), may open up new ways of interpreting
and understanding these contrasts.
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
Smith et al. (2006) expound a wonderful example of how portraits functioned in a local
­context. Fejfer (2008) stresses the relative uniformity and stability of honorific portraiture as
an expression of shared values and of integration into the Roman socio‐political system. La
Rocca, Presicce, and Lo Monaco (2011) is much more than an exhibition catalogue, as it
includes studies on a wide range of important issues relating to Roman portraiture. Trimble
(2011) is a study on the use of the so‐called Large Herculaneum Woman statuary type as a
portrait body for women of the Roman elite, and how visual replication shaped human experience, relationships, and meaning in a specific historical context. Alexandridis (2010) is a useful
article summing up and reevaluating her own previous work on the bodily representation of
Roman women. Edmondson and Keith (2008) is a collection of articles, all of which stress the
social symbolism of the dress of both female and male elite patrons. An excellent in‐depth
study of the representation of the Roman emperor is von den Hoff (2009) on Caligula. Zanker
(1987/1988) stresses Augustus’ ideological use of the newly shaped imperial image. Evers
(1994) combines art history and epigraphy in order to identify the workshops that potentially
produced the circa 150 surviving portraits of Hadrian. Bartman (1999) is a detailed study of
portraits of Livia and also incorporates epigraphic evidence. Boschung (2002) and Rose (1997)
are both concerned with imperial family groups. For the typology and style of imperial and
private portraiture, Boschung (1993) and Fittschen (1971) remain essential. For a broad study
centered on beholder response to portraiture in western societies, see Brilliant (1991). The
works of David Freedberg (1989) and Alfred Gell (1998) have had significant impact on
­portrait studies: Freedberg describes the emotional and psychological effect that images can
have on the viewer, whereas Gell was concerned with social context and what “art” does. On
portraits in a “Gellian” analysis, see Stewart (2006) and also Tanner (2007). Whitley (2003/4)
has done exciting work on statues and their inscriptions as social agents.
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249
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