Asking Different Questions: 3D Scanning and the Refinement of the Typological Method in Hadrianic Portraiture

This study aims to identify imperial portraits through contextual and iconographic markers rather than from physiognomy and hairstyle. Modern scholarship categorizes portraits into types based on facial features and hair arrangements, applying standards facilitated by photography, a mid 19th-century invention that fundamentally altered expectations with regard to physical resemblance. The approach implies that ancient viewers recognized emperors through a facial likeness and fixed hairstyle. Using 3D scanning of seven Hadrianic-period sculptural portraits, analysis of provincial coinage, and a text by Arrian, we demonstrate that this methodology, while productive for identifying some relationships, does not fully describe how Roman imperial imagery functioned. Arrian explicitly states that schema (form/iconography) and location mattered more than a physical resemblance. Similarly, provincial coins of Hadrian display a range of physiognomic variations, thereby leaving the inscriptions and imperial context to indicate identity. Digital technology offers new tools in this regard: superimposition reveals that while some portraits demonstrate direct copying, others assigned to the same purported “type” share loose patterns. The evidence indicates a flexible system in which imperial symbolism and context took precedence over physiognomic likeness, with significant implications for how we identify portraits and understand Roman visual communication.