Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
60
Head of a Nymph or a Hermaphrodite
The nose is broken, and the surfaces have iron stains, especially on the left eye, right cheek, and neck. There is slight chipping on the lips and left cheekbone.
A single figure or a monumental version of a statue related to forerunners of the well-known group of the satyr wrestling with a hermaphrodite. This head, and its complete figure, seems to have been carved in the second century of the Empire. It features more idealization than do the commonest versions of the groups involving a hermaphrodite in compromising poses, and this head might come from a separate, more ideal and reposeful statue of a nymph or a hermaphrodite. Graeco-Roman copyists offer numerous instances of statues produced independently from groups, with appropriate changes or simplifications, to create a free-standing, decorative figure for an urban courtyard or a rural villa with park or garden.
A small statue, with a restored head, of a hermaphrodite holding Eros found in the ruins of a villa near Rome, shows the type of free-standing, decorative statue from which this head could have come. Such statues were carved in Athens and the Greek islands for export to the country seats of Italy (Jones, 1912, p. 181, no. 109a, pl. 42).
The more vulgar Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman heads, with the thick hair of satyrs and the puffy cheeks of a baby, are also found together with satyrs or Pan grasping them and as free-standing figures. An example in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has a large wreath of vine leaves and grapes in the hair, suggesting a young maenad rather than a hermaphrodite. Like the Harvard head, this example is slightly larger than many of the surviving groups and fragments thereof, which were set in the gardens of Graeco-Roman houses and in the niches of baths and gymnasia (Comstock, Vermeule, 1976, p. 126, under nos. 194, 195). In general, when grouped together the childlike nymphs grasp their satyrs by the hair while the hermaphrodites shove them in the face (Ridgeway, 1972, under no. 23, pp. 63, 64, 178-180).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
