Velificatio Velificatio Velificatio is a stylistic device used in ancient Roman art to frame a deity by means of a billowing garment. It represents "vigorous movement," an epiphany, or "the vault of heaven," often appearing with celestial, weather, or sea deities. It is characteristic of the iconography of the Aurae, the Breezes personified, and one of the elements which distinguish representations of Luna, the Roman goddess of the Moon, alluding to her astral course. A figure so framed is a velificans (plural velificantes). Not all deities are portrayed as "velificantes", but the device might be used to mark a member of
Luna (goddess) a goddess at Rome to the semi-legendary days of the kings. Titus Tatius was supposed to have imported the cult of Luna to Rome from the Sabines, but Servius Tullius was credited with the creation of her temple on the Aventine Hill, just below a temple of Diana. The anniversary of the temple founding ("dies natalis") was celebrated annually on March 31. It first appears in Roman literature in the story of how in 182 BC a windstorm of exceptional power blew off its doors, which crashed into the Temple of Ceres below it on the slope. In 84 BC,