Damnatio Memoriae in Stone: Two Portraits of Nero Recut to Vespasian in American Museums

Abstract

Two Roman portraits of good quality, one in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the other in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, have not previously been recognized as having been recut from the image of one individual into the likeness of another. Comparative iconography and other evidence indicate that both sculptures are portraits of the Emperor Vespasian (69-79 A. C.) reworked from likenesses of Nero, who had suffered a de facto damnatio memoriae. There are sufficient traces of the original portrait to suggest that the Cleveland head was probably recut from the last portrait type of Nero, while the Walters head seems to have been reworked from a portrait type of Nero in use at the beginning of his Principate. The determination that these sculptures have been recut serves to explain certain ways in which they deviate from the established iconography of the individual presently represented. For this reason and because such reworking may have important and wide ranging implications for our understanding of Roman portraiture, the issue of recut portraits deserves considerable attention.