Head of princess Julio-Claudia

Partial sculptural representation of a young woman. Only the part corresponding to her head and neck is preserved, which would be inserted into an unrecovered torso. The fragment of it is deteriorated, with various chips on the neck, chin, nose, cheekbones and, more noticeably, on the front part of it.

Koppel and Rodà (2007, page 110) describe the preserved piece as follows: "It represents a young woman with a sweet and serene expression, a rectangular forehead, almond-shaped eyes and thick eyelids, wide cheekbones, a short chin and a small mouth with full, well-shaped lips. profiled, separated by a narrow slot. The hair distributed by a central part is distributed on both sides of the head, close to the skull next to the part and raised in very marked waves on the sides. The strands combed back fall on the nape of the neck where "They would be collected in a thick ponytail.... From the edge of the mass of hair that delimits the face, short curly strands emerge that fall over the forehead and temples, highlighted by circular holes."

The sculptural piece in question was recovered during the archaeological excavation work of the Caesaraugusta theater (Escudero and Galve, 2003), specifically from a filling level of the hypocaenium, so it has been considered that, in its original position, it would be part of of the decoration of the stage front of said theater, perhaps within an iconographic program of imperial portraits, something seen in other Roman theaters of the same period in Hispania.

Koppel and Rodà (2007) conduct a detailed study of the formal characteristics of her head, focusing on the shape and style of her hairstyle and comparing it with the iconography of high-imperial portraits. Thus, he determines that the distribution of her hair is usually that of the empresses and princesses of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

This sculpture head would belong to the "Adolphseck 22-Formia" type, a model seen in portraits of Caligula and his brother Nero Caesar, so it could be identified with one of their sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla or Livia, of whom Statues were placed during the time of Tiberius and Caligula. Koppel and Rodà consider it more likely that this piece represents Drusilla, since she was the favorite sister of Caligula, who on several occasions commissioned it to be sculpted into a statue.

Regarding the origin of this sculpture, Koppel and Rodà see signs of its production in a provincial workshop, especially due to the lightness of the sculpting work on the back of the head, which has only been roughed out, and on the front part, which, Although much more elaborate, it has details that point to the simplification of forms.

The combined application of petrological techniques, cathodoluminescence and isotopic analysis has provided sufficient information to determine the Greek origin of the marble used in this sculpture. Specifically, it is a translucent white marble, with medium grain and compact structure extracted from the Marathi quarries, on the island of Paros (Lapuente et elii, 2009).