Annia Galeria Faustina or Faustina the Younger, the younger daughter of Faustina the Elder and Antoninus Pius, was born in about 125—130. Formerly engaged to Lucius Verus at the behest of Hadrian, she married, at her father’s request, her cousin, Marcus Aurelius, in 145. After the birth of her first child, Domitia Faustina, in 146, she received the title Augusta. Her relationship with Marcus appears to have been a close and loving one. She even accompanied him in 170—174 on his military campaign to the north, and she was designated Mother of the Camps or Mater Castrorum for her support. A second campaign took her to the East in 175 where she died. Subsequently, Marcus had her consecrated as a diva and commemorated her by the founding of a second Puellae Faustinianae.

The surviving portraits of Faustina the Younger have been divided into nine main types, commissioned to commemorate significant moments in her life as empress of Rome. Faustina’s first portrait type was created in about 147—148 when she was only seventeen and after the birth of her first child and her subsequent designation as Augusta. The finest surviving marble copy of this portrait is preserved in a bust from Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (fig. 246); several other copies and variants are also known. The Tivoli portrait is a magnificent evocation of a beautiful young empress, wife, and mother. Faustina is depicted with a smooth and polished face shaped like a perfect oval, almost straight and delicate eyebrows over drilled, almond-shaped eyes with partially closed Antonine lids, aquiline nose, and a small, rounded mouth. The drilled pupils of the eyes are formed like hearts, and the shape of the tear ducts is accentuated. The hair is arranged in a distinctive coiffure that is parted in the center and arranged in four overlapping segments on either side of the face, the bottom section covering the tops of the ears. The head is encircled by a narrow braid that begins at the apex of the head where the hair is again divided into individual plaits, all of which are gathered into a circularly shaped bun at the back of Faustina’s head. This coiffure, like that of her mother, owes much to the second-century taste for parted coiffures, inspired by those of Greek goddesses and popularized by Sabina. Also influential were the parted and sectioned coiffures worn by female court luminaries under Augustus and eagerly adopted by wealthy freedwomen. It might well be said that the portraits of Faustina the Younger, with their smooth youthfulness and sectioned coiffure, come as close as any portraits of the second century to resuscitating the Augustan ideals of womanhood.

A new type, of which there are at least twenty-two surviving replicas, was created around the time of the birth in 161 of Faustina’s twin boys, Commodus and Fulvus Antoninus, and celebrates her as the mother of two male heirs to imperial power and at the high point of her life. An example of this widely disseminated type of about 161—170 is a marble bust-length portrait from Rome and now in the Museo Capitolino (fig. 247), that depicts Faustina in her late thirties. Her features are the same as those in the earlier Capitoline portrait, but her face is imbued with an air of maturity. Her hair continues to be parted in the center, but the sectioned hairstyle has given way to a simpler and more flowing coiffure in which the hair is brushed in waves over her head. The curls practically cover her ears, and the wavy strands are gathered into a loose bun placed low at the back of her neck. The bust extends to below the breasts, and Faustina is draped in a tunic covered by a palla artfully wrapped around her shoulders in an embracing circle.