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Lot Essay
This fine female portrait head is sculpted in a translucent marble of warm white colour which is likely to have been quarried from the Greek island of Paros in the Aegean Sea.
The arches for the brows and the nose on the same plane of the forehead, the heavy eye-lids, plump lips and the absence of the use of the drill are all stylistic features which help to ascribe this head to the artistic production of the late Hellenistic period in Greece. In particular it appears to be close to a group of female heads, which according to Pliny (cf. Nat. Hist. 36, 34 ff.) had been created on the island of Rhodes by the sculptor called Philiscos and then shipped to Rome to adorn the temple of Apollo Sosanio.
The miraculous survival and discovery in 1937 of one of these heads at the site of the temple has allowed archaeologists to understand the extent of the influence of Rhodian art throughout the Hellenic world, particularly in Republican Rome. For a study of the head, now part of the collection of the Musei Capitolini at the Centrale Montemartini and a study of other similar heads of Muses, cf. E. La Rocca, 'Philiskos a Roma, Una testa di Musa dal tempio di Apollo Sosiano', in Alessandria e il mondo ellenistico. Studi in onore di Achille Adriani, vol. III, Rome, 1984, pp. 629-643, in particular see pl. XCIV, nos 1-4 for similar soft treatment of the cheeks.
The arches for the brows and the nose on the same plane of the forehead, the heavy eye-lids, plump lips and the absence of the use of the drill are all stylistic features which help to ascribe this head to the artistic production of the late Hellenistic period in Greece. In particular it appears to be close to a group of female heads, which according to Pliny (cf. Nat. Hist. 36, 34 ff.) had been created on the island of Rhodes by the sculptor called Philiscos and then shipped to Rome to adorn the temple of Apollo Sosanio.
The miraculous survival and discovery in 1937 of one of these heads at the site of the temple has allowed archaeologists to understand the extent of the influence of Rhodian art throughout the Hellenic world, particularly in Republican Rome. For a study of the head, now part of the collection of the Musei Capitolini at the Centrale Montemartini and a study of other similar heads of Muses, cf. E. La Rocca, 'Philiskos a Roma, Una testa di Musa dal tempio di Apollo Sosiano', in Alessandria e il mondo ellenistico. Studi in onore di Achille Adriani, vol. III, Rome, 1984, pp. 629-643, in particular see pl. XCIV, nos 1-4 for similar soft treatment of the cheeks.