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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ocatarinetabellatchitchix, post: 4258231, member: 99554&quot;]Very instructive research RC. If I may, I&#039;d like to add some details about&nbsp;&nbsp; the (marble) portraits of Faustina the younger:</p><p>Faustina Minor boasts an extraordinarily high number of known portrait types– as many as <b>nine</b> distinct versions. The concept of multiple portrait types for members of the Imperial household is a familiar one, yet Faustina Minor is an exceptionally well represented member of the Antonine Imperial household. Only Septimius Severus has more than Faustina Minor, with ten recognized types. As mirrored in contemporary numismatic evidence, a change in her official portrait corresponded with one of her many births, or another major life event, <i>cf.</i> B.M. Levick, <i>Faustina I and IIImperial Women of the Golden Age, </i>Oxford, 2014, p. 277.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1085558[/ATTACH]</p><p>The present example depicts Faustina Minor in her <b>eighth</b> and penultimateportrait type. This type was commissioned to commemorate the accession of Marcus Aurelius in 161 A.D., and the birth of Marcus Annius Verus in 162 A.D (<i>cf. </i>W. Ameling, ‘Die Kinder des Marc Aurel und die Bildnistypen der Faustina Minor’, in <i>Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik </i>90, 1992, p. 161). Portraits of this type share an undulating centre parting, coiled into an elaborate braided bun. The hairstyle covers the top of each ear, and a coil of hair rests on either side of the otherwise bare neck. Although later Faustina Minor portraits are stylistically frozen at around thirty years old, Kleiner notes that later portraits are noticeably “imbued with an air of maturity,” <i>cf. </i>D. Kleiner, <i>Roman Sculpture</i>, Yale, 1992, p. 280.</p><p>Close surviving examples of this portrait type can be found at the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul (Inv. no. 5130; <i>cf. </i>K. Fittschen, <i>Die Bildnistypen der Faustina Minor und die Fecunditas Augustae,</i> Gottingen, 1982, pl. 41); and Rome’s Capitoline Museum (Inv. no. 632; <i>op cit. </i>pl. 43).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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