1941.2: Veiled Head of a Woman

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
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Veiled Head of a Woman

The chin is chipped, and the edges of the hair at the left have been damaged. The underside of the neck appears to have been finished fairly smoothly in antiquity. A ribbon or fillet, just in front of the veil, hold her hair in place. The nose and a piece of the lower lip are restored; two pieces in the neck have been patched on again.

The relief dates from near the end of the fourth century series, about 320 BC; it has been dated and termed "about 320 by the sculptor of the stele in Budapest" (J. Frel, in a letter of 15 June, 1973). It appears that this head came from a monument so large that head and neck were worked separately and set into the body, as was the custom with veiled statues, like the Demeter of Knidos, in the fourth century BC. Otherwise, with a provenance in Rome, this head could have been broken or cut from a big Attic stele in antiquity, remounted or refinished as a bust or even a herm, and treasured by Roman Imperial collector. A similar fate appears to have befallen the woman from a big Attic funerary monument, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Comstock, Vermeule, 1976, pp. 48-49, no. 70).

A number of big Attic stelai relate to this head in the Harvard University Art Museums. The example in the Budapest Museum of Art show a woman of matronly aspect (whose head has been broken off) shaking hands with a bearded elder, an aging athlete or an older hero, who is presented in the heroic nude, cloak on his left shoulder and wrapped around his left arm. A boy, a servant with an offering in hand, stands cross-legged between them (Diepolder, 1931, p. 55, pl. 49, no. 2).

Other big stelai, usually with their heads carved in one piece with their bodies, show the type of Athenian matron represented here, standing or seated in very high relief against a flat background or an architectural setting made separately. The stele of Demetria and Pamphile from the Kerameikos in Athens is a perfect example (Diepolder, 1931, pp. 53-54, pl. 51, no. 1). A number of heads of veiled women of about 325 BC are related, including those from Chalkis on Euboea and one from the island of Rhodes.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer