Head of the empress Fausta (?). Rome (?), about 320-326. Marble

Damage has been done to the nose, chin, right cheek, and upper and rear parts of the rolled hair. The face is wide with regular, handsome features, small mouth with rather full lips. The incised pupils and irises indicate that the direction of the gaze is slightly to the right. Generalized modeling creates a sense of blandness here, but the broadly modulated flesh surfaces seem characteristic of the 320s.

Notable is the coiffure, which shows tight ringlets over the forehead but long tresses swept back over the ears, gathered into a plait, and brought forward over the top of the head: this is the Scheitelzopf introduced by empresses around the middle of the third century (cf. no. 363), and still worn by the empresses of the First Tetrarchy (Calza, 1972, no. 23). A plait like that of the Boston head seems characteristic of the younger ladies of the Tetrarchal family, including Helena, mother of Constantine (Calza, 1972, pi. li, fig. 158), and Fausta, his empress (Calza, 1972, pi. lxxxviii, fig. 311). Helena (who apparently died in 329) may have been the last empress for a generation or two to wear the Scheitelzopf.

Although this head has been identified with Helena by Vermeule ([1], 1964) partly on the basis of the coiffure, it does not belong with the group of likenesses convincingly identified by Calza (1972, nos. 80-86) as this empress. On the other hand, there seems little reason to date the head to the turn of the century (as von Sydow, 1969, does); its style is in conformity with what we know of imperial portraiture of the early 320s.

The profile resembles that shown on the coins of Fausta more closely than those of any other of the ladies of the Tetrarchal or early Constantinian courts: in addition to the hairdo, we see the same regular features, the almost straight nose, the small mouth, and the distinctive eyebrow curving gently upward, then steeply downward at the bridge of the nose (Calza, 1972, pi. lxxxvi, figs. 301-304, pi. lxxxviii, figs. 311, 312). Fausta's beauty was often mentioned in contemporary panegyrics and even recalled by Julian the Apostate (Oratio 1. 9).

Married to Constantine in 307, Fausta gave him three sons and two daughters; since the first of them, Constantine II, was born in 316, she probably married very young, but the age of this head does not seem too mature to fit her chronology. All coins bearing her image give the title Augusta (conferred in 324), but on none of them—unlike Helena—does she wear the diadem (Bruun, 1966, p. 45); hence, the absence of a diadem on this portrait cannot be used to date the work to before her elevation.

Acquired in Rome. J. D. B.

Bibliography: Vermeule (1), 1964, pp. 339-340; von Sydow, 1969, p. 7 n. 19, p. 161; Boston, 1976, no. 117; Comstock and Vermeule, 1976, no. 380.