Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
125
Fragment of a Figure in Relief
All of the edges are broken. The right arm and chest from shoulder to waist remain.
A lock of hair is visible on the shoulder of this figure, moving from left to right like Virtus on a large hunting sarcophagus. A bracelet is also visible on the right, upper arm, and the drapery (himation) has fallen around the waist, although the chiton (pinned on the right shoulder) covers the right breast. This is not a characteristic of Amazonian figures on big sarcophagi.
The sarcophagus with symbolic hunting scenes, about A.D. 230, in the Palazzo Mattei, Rome, has a figure of Virtus following the imperatorial hunter on horseback. Although the chiton has slipped from the right breast, the pose is identical with that of this fragment (Vermeule, C., 1978, pp. 140-141, 198, 365, fig. 148).
This figure may also be identified as a fragment from a sarcophagus depicting the myth of Achilles on Skyros. It shows a daughter of Lykomedes rather than an Amazon, Roma, or similar symbolic figure. The thickness of the background suggests a large sarcophagus or commemorative relief.
On other sarcophagi representing Achilles on Skyros, one of the daughters of Lykomedes typically holds out her arm in the gesture seen in the Harvard fragment. A good example is the late Antonine or Severan sarcophagus at Woburn Abbey depicting Achilles on Skyros. On the Woburn Abbey sarcophagus, the third daughter from the left assumes this pose, identifiable despite the fact that her arm has been restored without the bracelet which, in the original story, the girls grabbed while Achilles was busy with the martial equipment (McCann, 1978, pp. 67-68, fig. 73).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
