Livilla (sister of Claudius) - Portraiture

Portraiture

The iconographic identification of Livilla has posed many problems to date, mainly due to the damnatio memoriae voted against her by the Senate after her death. Several possibilities have been advanced but none has to date received widespread acceptance. However, a portrait type that survives in at least three replicas and which we may refer to as the Alesia type may very well represent Livilla. All these replicas show the head of a lady in her blossom years, with a hairstyle clearly from the tiberian period. The physiognomy is close but not identical to portraits of Antonia Minor, Livilla's mother, and some replicas seem to bear the marks of voluntary damage (that one would expect from a damnatio memoriae). For all these reasons, it has been proposed to see in this portrait type a representation of Livilla.

A cameo portrait of a lady with the silhouettes of two infants, has been tentatively identified as Livilla. Although it may be possible that the seated woman on right on the Great Cameo of France represents Livilla, it seems more probable that the female figure seated on the left and holding a roll is in fact representing Livilla, depicted there as the widowed wife of Drusus the Younger, seen just above her as one of the three heavenly imperial male figures.

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