Fragment of a Head of Commodus

Fragment of portrait of the emperor Commodus as a very young man. The fragment includes the whole back of the head and the forehead with left eye. His hairstyle consists of very curly, tousled locks, of which two fall onto the forehead, which is high and domed.The lower part of the face, found in the stores at Villa Adriana at Tivoli (Villa Adriana inv. 558) , was identified by Dr. Klaus Fittschen in 1986, thus forming a portrait of Commodus when he was 16-19yrs old. The photograph shows the original fragment in Liverpool alongside a modern plaster cast of Villa Adriana inv.558. The face was removed in the 18th century probably because the portrait was destroyed in antiquity in the practice of defacing Imperial portraits (damnation memorae).