ROMAN PERIOD, CIRCA 1ST CENTURY B.C./A.D.

Depicted with the front of her hair wreathed in ivy, her body twisted round and throwing her head back in ecstasy, this dynamic female figure is likely to have formed part of a Dionysiac group. Dionysus, god of wine and revelry, had a large retinue of followers: satyrs, maenads and animals such as fauns and goats. Maenads became a popular subject in Greek sculpture by the late 5th century B.C. and were often depicted as frenzied women enveloped in a drunken rapture. For an extant group of similar subject matter and composition, see the Satyr and Hermaphrodite group in the Skulpturen-Sammlung in Dresden, published in A. Stewart, Greek Sculpture Vol. 2, Yale, 1990, no. 727, and the Satyr and Nymph group in The Capitoline Museum, Rome (Nuovo Inv.1729) from Trastevere, Rome, published in R.R.R.Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture, London 1991, fig.158.