A Portrait of Antonia Minor in the Fogg Art Museum and Its Iconographical Tradition

Abstract

Among the numismatic, glyptic and sculptured portraits of Antonia Minor, three portrait types may be distinguished: 1) youthful and idealized (e.g. Ara Pacis, Juno-Ludovisi, coins of Crete and Thessalonica), 2) youthful and individualized (e.g. Malta, Leptis Magna, coins of Alexandria and Corinth), and 3) mature and individualized (e.g. Louvre, Erbach, Fogg Museum, coins of Rome and Clazomenae). Youthful, individualized portraits of the Malta/Leptis Magna type, which have recently been identified as Antonia's daughter Livilla, are here reassigned to Antonia Minor. The chronology and interrelation of the three portrait types are based, to a large extent, upon the development of Antonia's hairstyle in the more than thirty portraits discussed in this paper. The coiffure of Antonia's youth is characterized by a central part and round, braided hairknot, as in fig. 4 from the Ara Pacis. A variant of this hairstyle may be seen in figs. 12–14—where a series of flat pincurls are added along the forehead facing the middle part. In Antonia's middle age a hairloop and eventually a simple ponytail replace the hairknot (cf. figs. 1–3, 16–19). During the transition period forehead curls are at first retained (cf. fig. 11), but these are gradually abandoned in favor of two or three tiny curls tucked into the waves of the coiffure (figs. 16–17, 19) or of no curls at all (figs. 1–3, 18). The portrait of Antonia in the Fogg Art Museum (figs. 1–3) represents the final stage in the iconography of Antonia Minor; it may even copy the portrait which Claudius, in honor of his deceased mother, had carried through the Circus in a carpentum, probably on the anniversary of her birthday.