Imago clipeata

Imago clipeata (Latin: "portrait on a round shield") is a term in art usually used in reference to the images of ancestors, famous people or deceased on round shields (in Latin: clipeus).[1] In the Roman world they were used to depict the ancestral family tree in patrician houses of the Republic as described by Pliny (Historia Naturalis 35: 4-11).[2][3]

An imago clipeata on a consular diptych of Areobindus, Roman consul in 506 A.D. Musée du Louvre.

These shield portraits can be seen in architectural sculptural decorations, on sarcophagi and on standards of the Roman legions among many other types of representations in the Roman and Early Christian world. In Italian Baroque imagery, medallion portraits supported by nymphs or genii came to signify an apotheosis. In this context they are often called tondi.

References
  1. "Description and reproduction of Imago clipeata at the Forum of Augustus on the Athenian Acropolis". Archived from the original on 2005-04-12. Retrieved 2005-04-04.
  2. Winkes, Rolf (1969). Clipeata imago. Bonn.
  3. Winkes, Rolf (1979). "Pliny's chapter on Roman funeral customs in the light of Clipeatae imagines". American Journal of Archaeology. 83: 481–484.
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