This portrait head is much larger than life. It shows the emperor with his hair characteristically lying forward at the front, but with a puffier face.

Nero claimed to rule with modesty and mercy, in the perceived manner of his ancestor Augustus. However he was soon in fatal dispute with his mother and first wife, and plotting and revenge dogged the rest of his reign. Half of Rome was destroyed in a fire in 64 CE; some naturally blamed him, as head of state, for it. From the ashes he built for himself the domus aurea, a huge and lavish palace decorated with gold leaf