Portrait of Faustina the Younger, about 160 CE
Roman, Imperial Period. Torlonia Collection. © Torlonia Foundation. Photo by Lorenzo De Masi
When Rome began deifying imperial women in 38 CE, sculptors developed new divinely inspired iconography for their portraits, drawing from depictions of goddesses, priestesses, and even sacrificial animals. They used agrarian symbols to emphasize fecundity and peacocks, linked to the god Juno, to signal their mode of ascension into the afterlife. These evocative sculpted portraits reveal imperial women’s dual roles as power brokers and fashion connoisseurs, not unlike contemporary women in politics.
Join C. Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and Peter C. Ferry Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum, to explore how the Roman Empire deified its empresses through divine iconography.
This program is generously sponsored by the Boshell Family Foundation.
About the Speaker
Charles Brian Rose is the James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and Peter C. Ferry Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section of the Penn Museum. He was the museum’s deputy director from 2008 to 2011 and served as president of the Archaeological Institute of America. Between 1988 and 2012 he was head of post–Bronze Age excavations at Troy, and he currently serves as director of the Gordion excavations.
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Closed captioning will be available for this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email access@artic.edu.
