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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1924.33
Title
Torso of a Woman, perhaps an Amazon or Artemis Bendis
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
sculpture
Date
c. 200 CE
Period
Roman Imperial period, Middle
Culture
Roman
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/292053

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Marble, seemingly from mainland Greece
Dimensions
30.5 cm (12 in.)

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Miss Elizabeth G. Norton
Accession Year
1924
Object Number
1924.33
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
88

Torso, Fragmentary, of a Woman, perhaps an Amazon or Artemis Bendis

The surfaces are weathered, and the marble is discolored to a darkish brown.

The date of this figure is undoubtedly in the late second or probably the third century of the Empire. The figure wears a girt tunic, of rough workmanship, with flat modeling. The belt also wraps what appears to be a heavy short cloak covering the shoulders and suggesting the beginning of a hood (a Thracian cap?) for the now missing head. The head and the arms from the edges of the tunic were made separately and joined with dowels or pins.

This lady in Thracian garb could be a late version of an Amazon, but single statues in this costume usually represent Artemis Bendis who, from the fourth century B.C. onward, at least, was worshiped in the greater Athens area, chiefly on the way to the Piraeus where Thracians were settled.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III and Amy Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 103, no. 88

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu