(Current research 2025 – present)
Sculpting Time: Identity and Temporality in Roman Funerary Portrait Reliefs
Roman funerary portrait reliefs offer a remarkable opportunity to think about how people in the ancient world represented themselves and how they wanted to be remembered. These reliefs do not simply record likenesses; they express identities and values, often through the careful combination of different artistic styles.
In my PhD research, I am examining how Roman funerary portrait reliefs expressed identity through ideas of temporality — how they related to the past, the present, and the future. The reliefs I study were mostly found in Rome and date from the late first century BCE to the mid-first century CE. They share a particular format and style and are believed to have been made by and for freed people.
A Shared Format and an Eclectic Style
The reliefs all seem to follow a similar format: figures, cropped just below the chest, are shown in a frontal pose, looking directly at the viewer. Almost all of them include multiple figures, and many show different sculptural styles within a single monument. This coexistence of styles is striking and unusual.
In some reliefs, old men are carved in a deliberately ‘ugly’ way, with exaggerated wrinkles, deep folds, and severe expressions, while other figures—often wives or sons, but not always—appear in a more polished, idealised manner. This stylistic variety seems to be doing more than simply copying different models; it carries meaning.
During the late first century BCE, when Rome was still a Republic, the dominant portrait style was hyper-realistic, known as verism (from verus, meaning ‘true’). These portraits exaggerate age to the point where the faces look harsh or even ugly to modern eyes. This style all but disappeared in elite portraiture by the Augustan period, yet it persisted in funerary portrait reliefs, long after its apparent decline elsewhere.
Freed People and Self-Representation
Roman funerary reliefs have traditionally been understood through a social lens. Many of the surviving examples come from freed people—former slaves who had become Roman citizens—and the reliefs are often seen as expressions of pride in this new status. They frequently display signs of citizenship, such as the toga, and of lawful marriage, which had been denied to them in slavery.
This interpretation, while important, can also be limiting. As Lauren Hackworth Petersen has pointed out, our readings of these monuments are often influenced by what she calls the Trimalchio Vision—a tendency to see freed people as socially ambitious and perhaps slightly vulgar in their self-presentation, like the character of Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyricon.
I want to suggest that these reliefs are not only social statements but also temporal ones. They do not simply show who these individuals were, but how they saw themselves in relation to the past and how they wanted to be remembered in the future.
Style as a Marker of Time
The combination of different sculptural styles within one relief—particularly the juxtaposition of veristic and idealised portraiture—can be understood as a conscious engagement with time. Verism connects the portrait to the moral values and traditions of the Republic, evoking ideas of ancestry, authority, and mos maiorum (the customs of the ancestors). The smoother, idealised style links the figures to the present, to Augustan ideals of harmony and renewal, and perhaps also to the future, through a more timeless, youthful appearance.
Through these stylistic contrasts, the reliefs weave together past, present, and future. The portraits become visual narratives of temporality—each face representing not only a person but also a moment in time and a way of belonging.
A Family Across Generations
One relief that I am studying in detail shows three figures: an elderly man, a woman, and a boy. Each is carved in a distinct style. The man’s wrinkled and severe features recall Republican verism; the woman’s hairstyle follows that of Livia; and the boy is shown with the smooth, idealised features of Augustan portraiture.
The inscription gives their names: Lucius Vibius Felix, Vecilia Hilara, and their son Lucius Vibius Felicio. The faces resemble one another closely, suggesting a deliberate attempt to show familial continuity. The old man’s veristic portrait links the family to the moral authority of the past, the woman’s hairstyle connects them to the present world of Augustan fashion and values, and the boy’s youthful idealisation projects them into the future.
If, as some scholars suggest, the boy had died young, his representation as a bust might mark him as deceased, and the future he represents becomes a lost one. The relief, then, can be read as a temporal composition: the old man anchors the past, the woman embodies the present, and the boy gestures toward an imagined, interrupted future.
Family, Resemblance, and Continuity
Another relief, showing six figures, also explores ideas of continuity and likeness. All six figures look remarkably similar, suggesting that the sculptor deliberately repeated certain facial features to create a sense of family resemblance. Small variations—lines, folds, the curve of a mouth—differentiate individuals and express age or personality.
The two central men show the clearest signs of old age and are carved in a veristic style, while the women wear Augustan hairstyles. The arrangement and variety of expressions suggest generational differences, but also connection. They appear to look out at the viewer, engaging anyone walking past their tomb. The relief seems designed to bring the deceased into the present, to make them visible and almost alive to those who see them.
These portraits commemorate the dead, but they also remind the living of their own place in time. In their mix of naturalism, idealisation, and direct gaze, they bridge the space between the world of the living and the memory of the past.
Temporal Identity and Self-Fashioning
These funerary portraits invite us to think about identity in more complex ways. They are not only about legal or social status, but also about how individuals positioned themselves in time. The continued use of verism among freed people suggests a deliberate act of self-fashioning, a way to claim a moral or cultural lineage reaching back to the Republican past.
The eclecticism of style—the coexistence of old and new within the same composition—was not a sign of confusion or lack of skill. It was a meaningful choice. Through these visual combinations, patrons created a form of temporal identity that situated them across different moments in Roman history. Style itself became a way to think about memory, ancestry, and the shaping of selfhood.
Looking Ahead
In the next stage of my research, I will analyse all 276 funerary reliefs catalogued by Kockel in the 1990s, focusing on patterns in style, composition, and representation. I am particularly interested in how age, gender, and pose might reflect ideas of temporality and identity.
Roman art is often described as eclectic, but this eclecticism was deeply rhetorical. In funerary portraiture, it offered a way for people to construct identity across generations and across time. These reliefs suggest that being Roman meant being situated within history: remembering one’s past, living in the present, and projecting oneself into the future.