Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
18
Head of a Female Figure
The nose is rubbed, and there are surface scratches around the mouth, eyes, and forehead.
The head is of a woman with her hair drawn up in back, forming a chignon; she is wearing a fillet. The head may have been part of a votive or funerary statue of small dimensions, or its frontality could make it part of an architectural ensemble, such as a balustrade.
The facial type points to a provincial style of the fifth century BC. Small, provincial heads of divinities and others from Egypt or Cyprus (Comstock, Vermeule, 1976, p. 121, no. 185), from mainland Greece or the Aegean islands (Comstock, Vermeule, 1976, p. 122, no. 188), and from Asia Minor by way of Istanbul, of the divinities Men or Attis (Comstock, Vermeule, 1976, p. 143, no. 229) show the same large eyes outlined by simple, heavy lids, summary hair in a retrospective style, compressed lips, and direct, unemotional frontality.
Whatever its antecedents, this head appears have been carved in the Roman Imperial period, probably in Asia Minor some time during the first century or first half of the second. Simple though they may be, and of indifferent quality in terms of Greek sculpture of the fifth century BC through the Hellenistic age, heads such as this provided a bridge to the Late Antique, proto-Byzantine statues and relief in the Greek Imperial world.
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
