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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1920.44.148
Title
Small Female Head
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
head, sculpture
Date
50 BCE
Period
Hellenistic period, Late
Culture
Greek
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/292215

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Crystalline Greek marble, probably from the Greek islands
Dimensions
H. 5.4 cm (2 1/8 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Miss Elizabeth Gaskell Norton, Boston, MA and Miss Margaret Norton, Cambridge, MA (by 1920), gift; to the Fogg Museum, 1920.

Note: The Misses Norton were daughters of Charles Elliot Norton (1827-1908).

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of the Misses Norton
Accession Year
1920
Object Number
1920.44.148
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
56

Small Female Head

The face is somewhat battered, with most of the nose and lips missing. The area above the eyebrows is also scraped, as is the surface around the subject’s own left ear. The head is tilted on its neck toward its own right side.

This small head appears to come from a draped figure of a Hellenistic type based on fourth century B.C. models and used, inter alia, for Muses. The hair is tied around the top of the head with two rudimentary fillets, one of which extends to tie up the bun at the back of the head. The face provides a very distant echo of the style of Skopas.

An Aphrodite with a small Eros on her left arm, a late Hellenistic variant of the draped "Venus Genetrix" type, was found together with an inscribed base "To (the) Syrian Aphrodite," at the shrine of Ptoan Apollo in Boeotia; the head is in a class with this small example (Sotheby Sale, New York, 16 May, 1980, lot 264). The so-called "Daughter of Asklepios" of about 270 B.C. from the Asklepieion of Kos, in the Landesmuseum at Stuttgart, is turned in the opposite direction and looks more decidedly upward but gives a frame of reference for what is seen in this small head (Schefold, Cahn, 1960, pp. 470-471, no. VII 363). The Stuttgart head is perfectly preserved, enabling us to visualize the early Hellenistic characteristics surviving, albeit with the wounds of time, in the Norton head.

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. 74, no. 56

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