The wig-like structure of solid waved hair with a coiled disc behind the head was a common style at the time of Julia Domna, who died in 217. Elaborate hairstyles for female portraits had been popular all through the second century before dying out in the third.
The identification of this portrait as Julia Domna is by comparison to Roman paintings of the Severan royal family — she was wife of Septimius Severus and mother of Caracalla. But since there is often little to distinguish private portraits of that time from those of an empress, it is not certain. Julia Domna was Syrian by birth, and famed for her cultured erudition
Rome, Capitoline Museum, Galleria 27
Hekler: Greek and Roman Portraits, pl. 288b
Stuart-Jones: Catalogue of the Capitoline Museum (1912), 103, no.27
