Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
127
Head of a Lady
There is extensive use of the drill in the hair, creating a honeycomb pattern. The top of the head has been broken at the back, and there is a horizontal dowel-hole back to front.
This head came perhaps from a large stele or the couch-figure of a sarcophagus of Sidamara type. A head in Istanbul from Ovabayindir Balikesir, in western Phrygia or eastern Lydia, has been dated in the Neronian to Flavian periods and gives a more elegant, curlier-headed version of how ladies like the Harvard example developed in Asia Minor, suggesting, too, that the Harvard head could be one of the last examples of the honeycomb hair style and might have been produced under Trajan (A.D. 98-117) or Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) (Inan, Rosenbaum, 1966, pp. 108-109, no. 110, pl. LXIV, figs. 3, 4; compare also, pp. 112-113, nos. 116, 117, pl. LXX, two Flavian women in Bergama, from Pergamon).
There are also many such women on couches from finds in the area of Rome, but they usually lie flat on their pillows and do not have the fullness of this head, unless they are little children, servants, or seasonal genii (Wrede, 1981a, Heft I, pp. 89-96, figs. 3-7).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
