The Portraiture of Caligula

Condition: There are so-called fresh breaks at the left ear, in the hair, above the right eye, and on the edges of the old patinated break at the neck.

The subject has been identified as the child Nero from an early Julio-Claudian processional relief like those of the Ara Pacis or the Ara Pietatis Augustae. The princely child was doubtless marching determinedly along beside his elders, notably his mother Agrippina the Younger, just as do the two little boys and the slightly larger girl in the two family groups with children on the south frieze of the Ara Pacis.

Gift of Emily Townsend and Cornelius C. Vermeule III in the name of Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule, 1994
Accession number: 1994.353

Provenance/Ownership History: Said to have come from a private collection in New York and originally from Rome; by 1980: Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule Collection (loaned to MFA as 214.1980); year end gift of Emily Townsend and Cornelius C. Vermeule III in the name of Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule, December 1994 (Educational non-profit Use Only Guidelines)

Messalina

Claudius- Vatican Museum

Claudius - Libya

Claudius- Louvre

Julio Claudians from MFA Boston- (left to right: Augustus, Augustus, Nero Drusus?, Caligula recut, Livia.

These portraits of the Julio Claudian Emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero are all found at the temple Dendera.

Roman Emperor Claudius, Musei Capitolini alla Centrale Montemartini, Rome

Portrait head of the Roman Empress Agrippina the Younger
(AD 15-59), Pentelic marble. Found on the west slope of the Athenian Acropolis.
Agrippina was the sister of the Roman Emperor Caligula,
wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius, and mother of the Roman Emperor Nero.
Made between A.D. 41-54.
National Archeological Museum, Athens. (photo courtesy of Menesje)

Statue of Marcus Agrippa (collage).
From the Prytaneion of Magnasia (Turkey).
Marcus Agrippa was the sun-in-law of Roman Emperor Augustus.
Marble.
Early 1st century A.D.
Altes Museum, Berlin. (Photo courtesy Menesje)

Chalcedony portrait bust. Old, beardless man, in paludamentum. Tip of nose and edge of ears broken, a large piece chipped from the bust in front. Probably made for attachment to some object. (Used under the MFA Educational Only Guidelines)

Julio-Claudian couple, full front, side by side. Suggestions have been that it is Nero and Octavia, Claudius and Messalina, and Caligula and Drusilla. White on brown sardonyx. (Used under the MFA Educational Only Guidelines)

Portrait head of Drusus the Younger (13 B.C.- A.D. 23).
Pentelic marble.
Found in the Roman Agora, Athens.
It represents the son of the Roman Emperor Tiberius.
National Archeological Museum, Athens.

Drusilla? Munich Glyptotek

Height x length (of face): 34.5 x 16.2 cm (13 9/16 x 6 3/8 in.)
Marble

Classification: Sculpture

This type of bust, which includes only the upper part of the shoulders and breast, dates to the Julio-Claudian period or slightly earlier. Her hairstyle features a nodus (literally, a knot) over her forehead, a from the end of the republic into the reign of Tiberius.

Her hair is divided by two parallel partings into three portions. The middle section is brushed forward to form a roll above the forehead and is then divided into two braids wound around the head. The lateral sections cover the tips of the ears in wavy strands, to the back of the neck, where the ends of all three sections are gathered into a knot. The surface above the braids has fine parallel lines engraved on it.

The tip of the nose is restored in plaster; there are hardly even any minor dents, and the surfaces are only slightly darkened or toned. (Used under the MFA Educational Only Guidelines)