The Roman marble portrait bust known as the “Vatican Cleopatra,” depicts the neck and head of a female figure. As with other female portraits of the Roman Republican period, the figure has a youthful, idealizing oval face with smooth skin, gently curved eyebrows, and a small, full-lipped mouth. Her eyes are large and almond-shaped, and her chin is gently rounded below the mouth.  She stares vacantly into the distance, retaining a calm and serene expression that recalls female portraiture found in the Greek Hellenistic period. On the surface of the left cheek, there is a small fragment of marble that extends slightly above the plane of the face. The figure wears the Greek “melon coiffure” of evenly divided braids beginning at the crown of the head and extending to the nape. The braids are gathered into a knot on the back of the head and tied, similar to the knot of hair on top of the head in portraiture of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Around the head, the figure wears a wide diadem that drapes under the bottom of the knot on the back of the head. On the front of the diadem above the forehead, the figure has a broken nub of marble that has been suggested by scholars to be the piece of a lotus crown or a uraeus, the royal cobra, a characteristic mark of the Egyptian pharaohs.

Significance:

Despite Cleopatra VII’s connection to both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony of the Roman Empire, depictions in-the-round of the Hellenistic Egyptian queen of Roman origin were rare. Until the period of the early 1930s, the portrait of the “Vatican Cleopatra” was understood as a representation of a priestess of Ceres rather than Cleopatra VII—the head had been placed into a body recovered from the same villa, and the two objects were presented together incorrectly for almost two hundred years. A German archaeologist first recognized the inconsistency of the image of the head featured with the body of a priestess, noting that the head bore a resemblance to coin portraits of Cleopatra VII found in Rome and Alexandria. The nose, which had been restored in the 1800s but removed later because of its incorrect alignment with the face, mimicked the hooked quality of the nose shape shown of the figure in her lifetime coin portraits across the empire. Though much has been learned of the “Vatican Cleopatra,” the sculpture still leaves many questions unanswered regarding its placement, use, and function during Roman times. Since its recognition as a portrait of Cleopatra VII, many scholars have suggested, by reviewing the writings of the Roman historian, Appian, that the face is a copy of a full-length gold sculpture dedicated by Julius Caesar to Venus Genetrix. Venus Genetrix was the Julio-Claudian line’s version of the goddess Venus, and most importantly, Caesar’s ancestor, therefore making the significance of Cleopatra VII being represented alongside the goddess more emblematic of her importance in the familial line of the Julii. The original sculpture could have been placed in the temple alongside a sculpture of Venus, one of Julius Caesar, and possibly one including the couple’s son, Caesarion. Some have identified the small piece of marble on the figure’s face as being an indication of Cleopatra rendered in the role of Venus: it is possible that the child Caesarion was represented as the god Eros, Venus’ son, sitting on the shoulder of his mother with one hand resting gently on her cheek. Other scholars, however, have interpreted the excess piece of marble simply as a mark utilized by the artist during carving that was never fully rendered. Though a depiction of Cleopatra VII in the guise of Venus would have served as a symbolic maternal representation of the queen, no ancient sources describe the original gold statue of the Temple of Venus Genetrix in detail or mention a portrait completed of Cleopatra VII as a goddess during her time in Rome. 

This encaustic painting on rectangular cedar wood, known as “L’Européenne,” depicts the portrait bust of a young woman, from her head to her upper body, placed atop a grey-blue background. Her face, an ovular shape with a subtle point at its base, consists of soft, delicate features, including a long, slender nose and teardrop recess above small lips slightly upturned on the right side. Disproportional to these features, her big, pointed ears, characterized by earrings consisting of a black stone set between two pearls, measure to nearly one-third of her facial height. Perhaps most significant, however, are her large, lidded eyes enclosed by smoothly curving brows, which highlight dark, rounded irises that peer out to her right toward the viewer as the focal point. They appear naturalistically rendered, even consisting of blacker pupils at the center, as well as tiny white specks in the upper and lower portions of the irises, which signifies the reflective, watery quality of the eyes, thus adding a lifelike effect. Additionally, the slight shadows at the bottom rims of the eyes and beneath the mouth, and the more prominent ones along the right brow, eye socket, nose bridge, and cheek, create a sense of three dimensions, based on the light coming from the viewer’s left. Whereas the right side of the face includes a greyish-pink blush, the left, brighter and more directly lit, reveals a slight orange tint atop her otherwise pale, almost white skin. Painted with the same small, impressionistic strokes of the face, the subject’s hair consists of fine black strands moving upward and coalescing at the upper head in a braided band, topped by a spherical gold hairpin. In the lower portion of the bust, a slightly worn, gold-leaf cloth piece drapes around her slender neck and shoulders, down to a green, gold-lined brooch just above her chest. Under this scarf-like element rests drapery characterized by a more saturated gold color with purple diagonal folds, which completes her elegant appearance.

Significance:

A rare example of Greco-Roman painting preserved from antiquity, this female portrait expresses the realism common in Egyptian “Fayum portraits” from the 1^st and 2^nd centuries AD. Its features mark it undeniably as one of these so-called “Fayum portraits,” named for the Fayum oasis in Egypt, 150 miles south of Alexandria, from which many were first excavated by British archaeologist W.M. Flinders Petrie between 1887 and 1889. Although the provenance of this particular piece is unknown, its stylistic characteristics, remarkably similar to those of the Portrait d’Homme Barbu in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijin, suggest that it comes from the more southern Antinoopolis site, uncovered by Egyptologist Albert-Jean Gayet between 1896 and 1911. Created by Roman emperor Hadrian in honor of his companion, Antinous, Antinoopolis was most likely comprised of Greek colonists, including those from Greek settlements in Fayum, who were dubbed, “Antinoans, New Greeks,” by Hadrian and may have brought their illusionistic painting techniques and funerary practices to the new city.

 In their original context, portraits such as this one were added to the front of Egyptian mummies decorated with gold-leaf scenes, as a part of a funerary practice aiming to preserve the soul of the individual in the afterlife. It is for this reason that the eyes are enlarged and emphasized, since they enliven the portrait and communicate the person’s soul. While most of paintings from antiquity have not survived, this portrait and others like it exist today as unique specimens because they were preserved in Egyptian desert conditions. Stylistically, they offer fascinating and significant insights into Greco-Roman painting traditions, which likely trace back to the naturalistic techniques of Apelles, Alexander the Great’s official portrait painter, in the 4^th century B.C. When Macedonians came to Egypt during Hellenistic times, aspects of Apelles’ style were purportedly incorporated into the Alexandrian school of painting, which eventually developed into the Fayum tradition visible in this portrait. Most notably, this is evident in the encaustic method used to create it, a fine painting technique of Classical Greek origin that was used for realism. For this portrait, the cedar wood would have been prepped with a black coating, before being painted quickly with hot beeswax mixed with pigments, particularly the Greek primaries, white, yellow ochre, red and black, using a brush, and refined with a sharp tool called a cauterium, to blend uneven surfaces together. Given this hasty process, caused by the quick drying time, it is not surprising that the fine, painterly strokes have been compared to impressionism by scholars such as Doxiades. Aesthetically speaking, this portrait, acquired by the Louvre in 1951, derives its name, “the European” from its pale skin, which may be an appropriate label since most of the settlers in Antinoopolis were of Greek origin. Her clothing, consisting of gold drapery, a hairpin, and an emerald brooch, most likely reflects the Greco-Roman fashions, as it was made when Egypt was under Roman Imperial control. Interestingly, the gold-leaf, unlike many other Fayum portraits, where it was applied to the background, is strictly used on her garments. Of all her features, she is best remembered for her “curious gaze”, as her lively eyes look to her right, rather than straight out, marking her distinctiveness among Fayum types and preserving her individual personality, which viewers in the Louvre can still witness today.