ANTONINE PERIOD, CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Pierre Moussa was a French banker, philosopher and humanist who, alongside his wife, Anne-Marie, collected a wide variety of objects. These ranged from contemporary works to Chinese works of art and antiquities from the Classical world.

Depicting a female head with a delicate oval face, pointed chin, almond-shaped eyes and wide-set mouth. Her hair is styled in a complex coiffure. It is centrally-parted and drawn back behind a high diadem to the back of her head, where it is pulled into an intricate chignon made up of three rows of plaited and entwined braids.
The observational portrait-like details of the face, would suggest that this is a portrait of an aristocratic lady, otherwise known as a woman of the patrician class. The patrician class would often imitate the hairstyles worn by members of the imperial family and this head recalls the style of hair of the empress Sabina (83-136 A.D.), wife of the emperor Hadrian, and Matidia Minor (85-162 A.D.), the half-sister of Sabina of the Antonine period. See inv. no. 21.88.35 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for portrait of Matidia Minor.