1933.158: Head of a Woman, copy after a Graeco-Roman type based on Greek original of 4th century BC
SculptureIdentification and Creation
- Object Number
- 1933.158
- Title
- Head of a Woman, copy after a Graeco-Roman type based on Greek original of 4th century BC
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Work Type
- head, sculpture
- Date
- 3rd century BCE-1st century CE
- Places
- Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Asia, Asia Minor?
- Period
- Hellenistic period, Late, to Early Roman Imperial
- Culture
- Graeco-Roman
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/292061
Physical Descriptions
- Medium
- Marble
- Dimensions
- 13.3 cm (5 1/4 in.)
Acquisition and Rights
- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Dr. A. Lawrence Lowell
- Accession Year
- 1933
- Object Number
- 1933.158
- Division
- Asian and Mediterranean Art
- Contact
- am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
- Permissions
-
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Descriptions
Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
39
Head of a Woman
Graeco-Roman or provincial, Imperial (Asia Minor?) type, based on an original of the fourth century B.C.
The back of the head is flat, as if possibly split off from a relief. The surfaces are smooth and worn and the marble is discolored.
The woman's hair is parted in the center and drawn back over the ears. The fillet runs across the brow, under the hair.
A head in the National Museum at Athens, identified as Ariadne and seemingly of the time of the young Alexander the Great, gives a good idea of the general prototype for this head. The Ariadne in Athens was discovered on the south slope of the Acropolis in Athens (Lawrence, 1927, p. 13, pl. 10 C).
A head in Berlin, from the Riccardi collection in Florence, has been related to another copy in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, and then to the head in Athens. It is suggested that there was a monument to Dionysos and Ariadne in the Street of the Tripods at Athens, from which all these heads derived, the Acropolis head being the original or very close to it (Blumel, 1938, pp. 32-33, no. K251, pls. 71, 72).
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. 55, no. 39
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