A GREEK MARBLE PORTRAIT OF A QUEEN

PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 1ST CENTURY B.C.

Details

A GREEK MARBLE PORTRAIT OF A QUEEN
Ptolemaic Period, Circa 1st Century B.C.
Her head turned to her left, with large lidded eyes and a small mouth, her earlobes perforated for the addition of now-missing earrings, her hair summarily carved, either to be completed in plaster or perhaps unfinished, but originally center-parted with a small chignon in back and tied with a diadem, with short locks along the edge of the forehead and a larger mass above, perhaps intended as a central tuft (nodus), sculpted to be inserted into a draped body
15¾ in. (39.3 cm) high

Provenance

Fine Antiquities Auction, Superior Galleries, 8-9 June 1993, lot 628

Lot Essay

The shape of the eyes, the treatment of the locks of hair at the forehead and the nodus find their closest parallel in the portrait of Cleopatra VII from the Villa of the Quintilii, now in the Vatican, no. 196 in S. Walker and P. Higgs, Cleopatra of Egypt, from History to Myth.

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