Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
57
Headless Statue of a Draped Woman
She is missing only the head which may have been made separately and attached, but is more likely a clean break across the lower neck. Also missing, and smoothed off, is the end of the drapery at the left hand. The weight at the end of the drapery above the left foot is broken off. The surfaces, although cleaned, are generally in excellent condition.
She is standing, wearing a long chiton and an ample himation. The garment conceals her right hand in the drapery hanging down her right side and the left hand in the folds that fall from the right shoulder to the left side, and the part of the cloak crossing from the right side to the left shoulder. The polish suggests the early Antonine period of the Roman Empire, but the cleanness of the drillwork could put that date back in the Flavian age.
This small statue has been recognized as a reduced replica of the Demeter in VI.5 of the Galleria dei Candelabri of the Vatican (Lippold, 1956, p. 410, no. 5, pls. 174, 175). The Vatican statue, a smaller version in the University Museum, Philadelphia, and a lifesized statue in the Torlonia Collection in Rome all have head preserved with the figures, and show a young lady with a so-called "melon coiffure." The attributes preserved in part in the lowered left hands of the Vatican and Philadelphia statues included two poppy-buds and sheaves of wheat. The youthful heads, at least one if not all of which must be ancient and pertinent, suggests the subject is Kore rather than the older, more mature Demeter. In a well-reasoned publication of the small statue in the University Museum, Karla K. Albertson has suggested the original should date about 240-230 B.C., when Berenike II of Egypt was being represented in Ptolemaic decorative art. Versions from full-scale to tabletop statuette were carved from late Hellenistic times onward for shrines and houses or gardens from Delos and Crete to Pompeii (Albertson, 1979, pp. 176-179, under no. 86).
As with other, popular draped statues available in Rome from Renaissance times onward, the Ceres or Demeter of the Galleria dei Candelabri was copied by Neo-Classic sculptors and decorators in various materials. One of these statues, 1.16 m high, is the Ceres by Francois Joseph Bosio, carved about 1800 and given to the Boston Athenaeum in 1845 (this and much other information adduced by Maxwell L. Anderson).
The common characteristic of most of these statues, ancient and modern, is their varying size, most being large statuettes but including a full-scale example. This suggests a variety of uses among the ancient sculptures, some for votive figures in small shrines or funerary portraits. The Grenville Winthrop statue could have been a portrait, with the divine identification of the prototype removed by concealing the left hand in the cloak.
The perception that these statues and reduced versions can be vehicles for imperial portraits is strengthened by the appearance of one of the imperial mothers in this costume on the south frieze of the Ara Pacis Augustae. She may be Julia, daughter of Augustus, following her husband, Agrippa (Bieber, 1977, p. 191, pl. 134, fig. 792).
A somewhat larger, allegedly ancient replica of this statue, specifically the Winthrop marble, was sold at auction in London as work of the first century A.D. Save for damages to the front of the plinth, the preservation is almost identical.
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
