1970.04

Bronze Portrait Head of a Woman

Purchased. Preserved ht. 13.4 cm; ht. from chin to top of hair 9 cm.

Stolen from the ANU collection in December 2004.

The head is of a relatively young woman with elaborate coiffure. The hair is brought into a nodus above the forehead with rolls over the temples. From the nodus it is drawn into a tight narrow plait over the crown of the head and at the back the hair is formed into a plaited roll secured by two further plaits. Locks of hair hang free down the neck at each side; there are also wisps of hair hanging down in front of the ears. The head is tilted slightly upward (although not so much as is suggested by the way it is mounted) and fractionally to the left. There is some sight swelling round the neck. No drapery is evident in the parts that remain. Some areas are restored but none is seriously affected: the left eyelid, the outer corner of the right eye, in the region of the right ear and temple (but not the ear itself), an area of hair behind the right ear, an area of hair above the left ear, the end of the chin. (There is no restoration of the upper lip as is stated in the sale catalogue.)

This distinctive hairstyle in its full form with nodus above the forehead, the rolls at the sides and the narrow band over the crown to a carefully constructed bun at the back was popular only for a limited time in the later part of the first century BC. Good examples from outside the imperial family are the woman and two sisters from the tomb of the Licinii, now in Copenhagen (Poulsen nos. 68-70). The nodus seems to have continued for some while afterwards without the other elaborations and it may be the simplified version that Ovid recommended for round-faced young women:

Exiguum summa nodum sibi fronte relinqui ut pateant aures ora rotunda uolunt

                                Ars Amatoria III 139-140.

This fine bronze, the most important piece in the collection, has a good claim to be a portrait of a member of the Julian family. On grounds of hairstyle, the choice must rest between the Empress Livia, wife of Augustus (57 BC – AD 29) and the Emperor’s sister Octavia (born ca. 36 BC). While there are reasonably secure portraits known of each (distinguished mainly on the basis of representations on coins), several pieces have been attributed to both by different scholars and so the problem of attribution is not a simple one. If it is Livia, it must be of her as a younger woman since she adopted a totally different hairstyle in her later years; nor do we see here the fully classicising treatment normal in the developed Augustan period. Of the earlier Livia portraits the Canberra head probably comes closest to one from Medina Sidonia in Span, attributed to Livia in part because it was found in association with heads taken to be Drusus and Germanicus. In general, however, our head seems closer to those taken to represent Octavia. Livia’s features seem to have been somewhat finer-boned and the nose straighter, whereas Octavia, like the Canberra head, had slightly heavier features. The profile of our head is almost identical to that of the beautiful cameo portrait of Octavia in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris; not especially the nose, mouth and chin.

Bronze portrait heads are rare and such well-preserved examples even rarer. The detailing and the modelling possible in bronze allow a degree of verisimilitude not often achieved in stone and this head has some importance in the study of Julio-Claudian iconography.

Of the considerable bibliography on Julio-Claudian portraiture, the following are perhaps the most relevant:

V. Poulsen “Studies in Julio-Claudian Iconography” Acta Archaeologica 17, 1946, 1ff.

F.W. Goethert “Zum Bildnis der Livia” Festschrift Andreas Rumpf ed. J. Dohrn (Cologne 1952) 93-100.

V. Poulsen Les portraits romains I. République et dynastie julienne.

W.H Gross Iulia Augusta. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung einer Livia-Ikonographie (Göttingen 1962).

Heinrich Bartels Studien zum Frauenporträt der augusteischen Zeit. Fulvia. Octavia. Livia. Julia (Munich 1963).

A. García y Bellido “Los retratos de Livia, Drusus Minor y Germanicus de Medina Sidonia” Mélanges Piganiol (paris 1966) 481 ff.

D.G. Mitten and S.F. Doeringer Master Bronzes from the Classical World (Mainz 1967) no. 232.

J. Babelon “Le camée d’Octavie” Monuments et memoires publiés par l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres, Fondation E. Piot, 45, 1951, 77-87.

B.M. Felletti Maj EAA V 806 (s.v. Ottavia Minore).

For a good discussion of the hairstyle, D. Faccenna Arch. Class. 7, 1955, 27 ff.

Three Thousand Years of CIassical Art (Exhibition Cat., Sydney, 1970) no. 136; J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 90-1.