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This engraved portrait of Flavia Domitilla, wife of the Roman emperor Vespasian, was executed by Aegidius Sadeler II toward the end of the sixteenth century and published by his brother Marcus Christoph Sadeler. It belongs to a distinguished series of imperial portraits that combined classical subjects with the stylized elegance of late Renaissance printmaking. The title, inscribed across the top margin in Latin, identifies the sitter as “Flavia Domitilla Vespasiani Uxor.” A pair of Latin verses below the image celebrate her virtue and mourn her untimely death.
Historically, Flavia Domitilla the Elder married Vespasian around A.D. 39 and bore three children, including Titus and Domitian. She died before her husband became emperor in 69, and ancient sources remember her primarily for her modest character. Sadeler’s print transforms this brief record into a monumental image, responding to the humanist interest in recovering and ennobling the figures of antiquity, especially those whose lives were known only in fragments.
Provenance
Winfield Robbins, his stamp.
![[Kita-Amerika-nai Gasshukoku | Yoroppa-nai teikoku Roshia]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/55548.jpg)
