A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT HEAD OF A WOMAN

LATE ANTONINE TO EARLY SEVERAN PERIOD, CIRCA 190 A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT HEAD OF A WOMAN
LATE ANTONINE TO EARLY SEVERAN PERIOD, CIRCA 190 A.D.
The youthful woman with her head angled slightly to her right, with an oval face, her center-parted hair pulled loosely into a large spiralling bun, the individual locks delineated, the deep groove of the part running across the entire crown of her head, some wisps along her neck, her ears barely emerging from beneath her hair, the arching brows incised, with heavy-lidded lunate eyes, the pupils articulated and oriented upward, the thin lips softly closed, the fleshy face with soft cheekbones and slightly protruding chin
9½ in. (24.1 cm.) high

Provenance

with Ariadne Gallery, New York, early 1990s.

Lot Essay

This woman's coiffure is the feature that most easily places her within the chronology of Roman Imperial portraiture. The large bun and center-parted hair was made popular in the Late Antonine Period by Faustina the Younger, daughter of the Emperor Antoninus Pius and wife of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. See, for example the portrait in Paris, no. 108, pp. 244-245 in de Kersauson, Catalogue des portraits romains, Tome II. The style was revived toward the end of the century on portraiture of Didia Clara and Manlia Scantilla, the daughter and wife of the Emperor Didius Julianus, who reigned for 66 days in 193 A.D. See also the relief of a man and a woman as Venus and Mars now in the Villa Albani, fig. 317, p. 349 in Kleiner, Roman Sculpture. This portrait likely falls into the revival period for the coiffure.

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