1924.33: Torso of a Woman, perhaps an Amazon or Artemis Bendis
SculptureIdentification and Creation
- Object Number
- 1924.33
- Title
- Torso of a Woman, perhaps an Amazon or Artemis Bendis
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Work Type
- sculpture
- Date
- c. 200 CE
- Period
- Roman Imperial period, Middle
- Culture
- Roman
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/292053
Physical Descriptions
- Medium
- Marble, seemingly from mainland Greece
- Dimensions
- 30.5 cm (12 in.)
Acquisition and Rights
- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Miss Elizabeth G. Norton
- Accession Year
- 1924
- Object Number
- 1924.33
- Division
- Asian and Mediterranean Art
- Contact
- am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
- Permissions
-
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Descriptions
Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
88
Torso, Fragmentary, of a Woman, perhaps an Amazon or Artemis Bendis
The surfaces are weathered, and the marble is discolored to a darkish brown.
The date of this figure is undoubtedly in the late second or probably the third century of the Empire. The figure wears a girt tunic, of rough workmanship, with flat modeling. The belt also wraps what appears to be a heavy short cloak covering the shoulders and suggesting the beginning of a hood (a Thracian cap?) for the now missing head. The head and the arms from the edges of the tunic were made separately and joined with dowels or pins.
This lady in Thracian garb could be a late version of an Amazon, but single statues in this costume usually represent Artemis Bendis who, from the fourth century B.C. onward, at least, was worshiped in the greater Athens area, chiefly on the way to the Piraeus where Thracians were settled.
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. 103, no. 88
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