It is a tempera or egg-based painting on a circular wooden panel or tondo with a diameter of. It depicts the Imperial family wearing sumptuous ceremonial garments. Septimius Severus and his sons are also holding sceptres and wearing gold wreaths decorated with precious stones. This image of a grey-haired Severus, with his wife and young children, emphasises the dynastic ambitions of the new emperor. The darker skin tone of Severus reflects his Libyan origins. Julia Domna has her distinctive hairstyle, crimped into parallel locks, possibly a style from her home in Syria, and perhaps a wig. One son's face has been obliterated in a deliberate act of iconoclasm, and the vacant space smeared with excrement. Most scholars believe it is Geta whose face has been removed, probably after his murder by his brother Caracalla and the ensuing damnatio memoriae. However, it is also possible that Geta is the smaller boy, and it is Caracalla's face which was eradicated, perhaps as a compensatory retaliation for Caracalla's mass execution of young Alexandrian men in the year 215. The tondo was probably created in a square or rectangular shape, and later cut into a circle. The loss of some of the original painting is most apparent with the sceptres that the males are holding: the upper parts, once adorned with imperial symbols, are now missing. It seems likely that the panel was cut down in modern times to improve its saleability on the art market.
Interpretation
The image is probably an example of imperial portraits that were mass-produced to be displayed in offices and public buildings throughout the Roman Empire; as part of Roman legal procedure, some documents had to be signed in front of an image of the emperor, which gave them the same status as if signed in his actual presence. With each change of emperor, the portrait would have been discarded or replaced. Since wood is an organic material and does not normally survive, the Berlin Tondo remains, so far, the only surviving specimen of this type of painting.
Provenance
The tondo appears to be of Egyptian origin, using similar materials and style to the Fayum mummy portraits. It may have been painted to celebrate the visit of Septimius Severus to Egypt in AD 199, following his military victories against Parthia the previous year, and before his campaigns in north Africa in AD 203. Caracalla is depicted as a youth, indicating a date before AD 205. The history of the painting after its creation is not known until the Antikensammlung Berlin acquired it in 1932 from an art dealer in Paris. It remains in the collection at the Altes Museum, one of the Berlin State Museums.
