JULIO-CLAUDIAN PERIOD, REIGN OF EMPEROR NERO, CIRCA 54-68 A.D.

With an elaborate coiffure consisting of three rows of ringlets surmounted by a crescentic diadem and with the remains of a tress behind each ear, this portrait can be identified as a member of the Julio-Claudian elite during the reign of Emperor Nero, possibly even one of Nero’s wives. Closest to the present example is a portrait in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo, tentatively identified as Poppea Sabina, Nero’s second wife, based on comparison to coins minted during Nero’s reign that commemorated her (see figs. 145-146 in T. Opper, Nero: The Man Behind the Myth). While both portraits share the same closed, bow-shaped lips and a fleshy face gently sloping to a pronounced chin, the portrait in Rome features a different hairstyle, including center-parted wavy hair and two rows of corkscrew curls. However, as Opper (op. cit, p. 185) remarks, precise identification of Neronian portraits is complicated by the damnatio memoriae that followed in the wake of Nero’s fall, since the vast majority of portraits connected to him would have been destroyed. That this woman is a member of the elite in the orbit of the imperial court is confirmed by the diadem.

The portrait head is mounted on a circa 18th century bust inscribed “IULIA TITI”.