Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Severan Tondo is a circular wooden panel measuring 35 centimeters in diameter that depicts Roman emperor Septimius Severus and his family. Tempera paint on wood shows Septimius Severus standing on the viewer's right side with wife Julia Domna on the left and sons Caracalla and Geta before them.
One son's face has been deliberately obliterated through iconoclasm executed after his murder by Caracalla's Praetorian Guard. The vacant space was smeared with excrement as part of an official damnatio memoriae declared by the Senate against Geta's memory during the dynasty's forty-two-year rule.
Dating the tondo has caused debate among scholars regarding whether it dates between 199 and 205 AD based on multiple factors. Evidence points to the work being created before 202 while his official portraiture first displayed aging that year and Caracalla born in 188 appears as a youth suggesting creation before 205 when mature portrait styles emerged for him.
The painting remains unknown until the Antikensammlung Berlin acquired it in 1932 from an art dealer in Paris. It now resides in the Altes Museum one of the Berlin State Museums under inventory number 31329.
The painting on wooden panel with tempera paints aligns consistently with Fayum mummy portraits style from the district of Egypt. Artists used the established Greek four-color palette of white red yellow and black alongside a single light source similar to Fayum works.