The portraits of Emperor Nero
(( A summary that nobody asked for ))
The fifth and last julio-claudian emperor Nero came into power in 54 A.D.at the tender age of 17. Throughout his 14 year reign he had a couple of different portrait Typen.
What is a portrait Typus you might ask. A Typus, or type (?) in English, is a portrait with specific traits (mainly fringes - they don’t call classical archaeologist “curls counters” for nothing) that were created for a specific occasion or time period. Emperors, depending on how long their reign was, if they were adopted by the previous emperor and if they wanted to commemorate several occasions, could have several portrait types. For example emperor Tiberius has 6 known types, whereas emperor Caligula only had 1.
Nero had 4 identified types of portraits:
1. Typus Parma (The adoption Type)
When Nero was adopted in 50 A.D., this type was created to celebrate and give news of the event all around the empire. People had to know how the next heir looks like. In order to emphasise the connection to emperor Claudius, Nero was depicted in a similar hairstyle to Claudius’s Typus Turin Portrait.
When Nero became emperor in 54 A.D., he had to commission a new type, which would be copied and shipped all over the empire. Nero is depicted older and fleshier in the chin region. However the Cagliari type remained similar to the Typus Parma, in terms of hairstyle. Only the hair strands just before the ears are longer and curl more inwards. Keeping a similar depiction from previous types and those of the other julio-claudians meant a stable continuation.
My personal favourite because with this portrait we experience a break in the julio-claudian tradition of portraits. No more continuity or connections to previous emperor portraits and no more straight hair. But when was Nero able to do such a stunt and ditch family tradition ? You guessed it: after his mother was assassinated in 59 A.D. The now 22 year old Nero depicted himself in a “to that time” fashionable hairstyle. His hair was longer and was combed to the forehead and arranged in a curvy S shaped curls. His face is made fleshier than in the previous types and in some portraits of this type, he also had a short neck beard.
4. Typus München / Worchester
In Nero’s last year as emperor, he created a new (and last) type of portrait. The face is much fuller/youthful and the hair is more evenly arranged. After Nero’s death and the order for all Nero portrait to be removed from public spaces (damnatio memoriae), this Typus was not only reworked into his flavian successors (Titus and Domitian), but also into portraits of his predecessors like Augustus.
D. Boschung, Die Bildnisse des julisch-claudischen Kaiserhauses. Ein kritischer Forschungsbericht, JRA 6, 1993, 39–79
D. Boschung, Nero im Porträt, in: Rheinischen Landesmuseum Trier, Nero. Kaiser, Künstler und Tyrann (Darmstadt 2016) 82–88
http://viamus.uni-goettingen.de/fr/e/uni/e/02/05
