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Identification 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
sculpture, head
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
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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