Portrait Head of a Woman, Probably the Empress Faustina Minor (c. 165 CE): Art, History and Details

Portrait Head of a Woman, Probably the Empress Faustina Minor (c. 165 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Acquired in 1925, this head was initially identified as a portrait of the Empress Lucilla (lived AD 149-182), wife of the Emperor Lucius Verus, who co-ruled with Marcus Aurelius from AD 161-169. More recently, scholars have identified the portrait as a representation of the Empress Faustina Minor (lived c. AD 130-176/177), wife of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180) and mother of Lucilla. The two women, relatively close in age, share a number of portrait features: heavy-lidded eyes, with incised irises and pupils; small mouth; and a distinctive hairstyle, parted in the center and pulled back in waves to a braided knot at the base of the neck.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait Head of a Woman, Probably the Empress Faustina Minor
• Date: c. 165 CE
• Culture: Italy, Roman
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble
• Dimensions: Overall: 25.4 cm (10 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1925.161

A detail from the museum

Scholars have disagreed about this portrait's identity—probably an empress, either Faustina Minor or Lucilla.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Howard, Rossiter. "Two Imperial Roman Portraits." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 12, no. 7 (1925): 123-124, 131.
• Bieber, Margarete. “Roman Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum.” Art in America 32 (April 1944): 65–83.
• Lee, Sherman. "A Roman Imperial Portrait of Lucius Verus." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 40, no. 3 (March 1953): 47-50.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.