Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
21 Cypriote
Head of a Woman
The fragment is broken off from a small statue, across the neck on a diagonal line which leaves most of the neck at the start of the left shoulder visible. The tip of the nose, the chin, and a section over the middle of the forehead have been damaged. There are traces of red paint.
The figure wears a tight turban or cloth, earrings, a necklace, and a tunic or cloak. There is a late Archaic or Transitional fringe of curls over the forehead and a face that echoes the Ionian styles of the time of the Persian Wars. Hair and face are softened by the fleshy neck and humanized by a turban that belongs to the period after the Parthenon frieze. These peculiarities, especially the fringe of archaizing curls, continue in Cypriote votive sculpture in the fourth century BC and of Hellenistic periods, the pupils of the eyes were flat for finishing in plaster and paint.
Small heads from the first L.P. di Cesnola Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, document the development of this style of hair and rendering of eyes, from about 470 BC well into or even through the Hellenistic period (Comstock, Vermeule, 1976, pp. 273, 276, 277, nos. 437, 442, 445, 446). Since styles on Cyprus were derivative of several sources and slow to change, heads such as this are often dated up to fifty years earlier than their probable dates of carving. The points of departure are the so-called "female votaries" of the Persian period, 535-332 BC. Those with cloth headdresses (British Museum, Type 33) are generally dated in the period 470-400, but variations continue later, as seems to be the case here (Pryce, 1931, pp. 104-112, especially pp. 107-108, c298, c299, both earlier examples).
The male counterpart of this head, albeit clearly a carving of about 450-430 BC in the Ionian Archaic style, is the figure in a long tunic and red cloak from a sanctuary near the village of Mandres in the Famagusta district and later in the Pierides collection, Larnaca, Cyprus (Karageorghis, 1973, pp. 86, 145-146, no. 92). The large ears and the neck are unadorned, but the facial expression is similar, in a timeless fashion. The Cypriote sources for the Harvard head can be found in various early Classical sculptures from the Peloponnesus, Sicily, Southern Italy, and, of course, the Greek islands leading to Western Asia Minor (Fuchs, 1969, pp. 254-257, figs. 279-283).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
