PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 3RD CENTURY B.C.

細節

A GREEK MARBLE PORTRAIT OF A QUEEN
PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 3RD CENTURY B.C.
Turned slightly to her left and inclined, her oval face with idealized features, her thin arching brows merging with the long slender nose, framing her thickly-lidded unarticulated almond-shaped eyes, her small mouth with bow-shaped fleshy lips, indented at the corners, her pointed chin prominent, the center-parted wavy hair bound in a fillet, rolled back at the sides and falling over her ears, the lobes emerging below, her graceful neck naturalistically contoured, displaying Venus lines, a mortise at the top of her head for attachment of a now-missing attribute, likely a crown, perhaps once set into a composite sculpture, the back of her head likely finished in a secondary material
11 5/8 in. (29.6 cm.) high

來源

Acquired in Paris in the 1950s-1960s.

拍品專文

The dynastic cult of the Ptolemies evolved from the native Egyptian tradition of Pharaonic adoration. The deification and worship of the living Ptolemaic rulers is recorded on reliefs and temple decoration in both the Egyptian and Greek styles. Founded by Ptolemy II for the deification of his parents as the Theoi Soteres, savior gods. The cult quickly came to encompass living rulers with individual cults for the king and queen.
As Ashton informs ("Identifying the Egyptian-style Ptolemaic queens" in Walker and Higgs, eds., Cleopatra of Egypt, from History to Myth, p. 149), "Images of deceased members of the royal family were worshipped as Sunnaoi Theoi, or temple-sharing gods, in both Greek and Egyptian temples..." Furthermore, the historical record preserves decrees "illustrating that the appearance of royal statuary was regulated and centrally controlled."
The identification and precise dating of these royal portraits, although often based on the comparison to likenesses on coinage and other established sculpture types, can be subjective and a matter of debate. According to Smith (Hellenistic Royal Portraits, p. 2), portraits of queens "are, for the most part, hard to distinguish consistently from representations of goddesses on the one hand and portraits of non-royal women on the other."
Here, however, the scale of the head and the presence of the mortise at the top of the head for the likely insertion of a crown, suggest that she is a queen. Her pointed chin, small mouth and fleshy lips, find parallel in portraits variously attributed to Arsinoe II, Berenike II and Arsinoe III. See, for example, a faience head of Arsinoe II in the British Museum, no. 8 in Walker and Higgs, op. cit.; and the Serapeion Queen, pl. 36, 3 in Smith, op. cit.