Details

LOT 0984

Roman Marble Head of a Woman

3RD-4TH CENTURY A.D.

15 3/8 in. (8.45 kg, 39 cm high).

Carved in three-quarter view, with hair dressed in a chignon with frontal band and wavy segments; soft facial features with much detailing remaining to the proper right eye and mouth; likely a frieze fragment; mounted on an old collector's display stand with typed label 'Marble, woman's head / Egypt / C.25-100 A.D. / Cat.No. 6169'.

Provenance

Acquired in trade from the San Franciscanum Museum, Israel, prior to 1980.
with Archaeologia, pre 1983, Switzerland and Canada.

Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D’Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate number no.12964-242755.

Literature

Cf. Wessel K., ‘Römische Frauenfrisuren von der severischen bis zur konstantinischen Zeit,’ in Archäologischer Anzeiger, 61/62 (1946-47); Meischner J., Das Frauenporträt der Severzeit, Berlin, 1964, pp. 20 ss.; Buccino L., ‘Morbidi capelli e acconciature sempre diverse,’ in La Rocca, E., Parisi Presicce, C. con Lo Monaco, A. (a cura di), Ritratti. Le tante facce del potere (catalogo della mostra, Roma, Musei Capitolini, 10 marzo- 25 settembre 2011)', Roma 2011, pp. 360-383; Scarpati G., ‘Ritratto femminile,’ and Fileri, E., ‘Ritratto femminile,’ in Gasparri C. e Paris, R. (ed.), Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Le Collezioni, Milano, 2013, n. 131, p.193; n. 266, p.366; the present example shows close similarities with the portrait of a young woman in the Prado Museum, in Barrón, E., Catálogo de la escultura. Museo Nacional de Pintura y Escultura, Madrid, 1908, pp.244, no.362, dated to 225-256 A.D.

Footnotes

The arrangement of the hair is characteristic of female portraits dating between the late Severan and Tetrarchic periods. The head, due to the treatment of the hair, finds comparisons with a female portrait in the Museo Nazionale Romano, depicting an elderly woman of the Antonine era, and with another female portrait in the same museum, dated to the third decade of the 3rd century A.D., reworked in the Tetrarchic period, and which showed a Severan so-called Nest Frisur hairstyle. The sculpture in question can therefore be dated between the full 3rd century A.D. and the first decades of the 4th century A.D. based on the hairstyle, the shape of eyes and eyebrows.