1972.06

Marble Portrait Head of a Woman

Purchased. Max. ht 29.5cm; chin to top of head 24cm; width 17.6cm.

Smooth, white, fine-grained marble with some grey veins. The chin, nose and ears are damaged; the top of the head is missing.

The head is turned slightly to the left. The hair is parted in the centre at the front and piled high on the head from a roll at the back. It is bound with double braids, knotted at the front. The waves in the lower part of the hair are rather crudely channelled; the upper hair has fine incisions. It is formed into distinct curls at the face. The eyes have a small drill hole for the pupil and a circular incision for the iris.

The treatment of the eyes suggests a post-Hadrianic date. The waves of hair at the temples and the arrangement of the hair turban-style are fairly typically Antonine. (For an elaborate example of the hair-do, see the Dresden head of Faustina the Elder [d. AD 141], e.g., M. Wegner, Die Herrscherbildnisse in antoninischer Zeit pl. 12). The hair is only lightly indicated, particularly in the upper part, but the treatment gives greater emphasis to the plastic modelling of the face which has an air of realism. Compare V. Poulsen, Les portraits romains ii (Copenhagen 1974) no. 74, pl. 109, for another head with the hair in turban-style; Poulsen pll. 179-180 which has the hair in a crude turban is closer in the modelling of the mouth; Poulsen pll. 171-172, again of similar type, is much more classicising. Note also F. Poulsen, Greek and Roman Portraits in English Country Houses (Oxford 1923) nos 78-79. Perhaps towards the middle of the second century AD; this hairstyle was very popular in the 130s.

For important discussion of the continuation of this kind of hairstyle, see H. von Heintze, “Ein spätantikes Mädchenporträt in Bonn. Zur stilistischen Entwicklung des Frauenbildnisses im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert”, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 14, 1971, 61-91; note also H. Iskan, “Überlegungen zu einem Gemmenporträt aus Patara und zur Ikonographie der Faustina Maior”, Antike Kunst 42, 1999, 92-98. For a simple, brief introduction to women’s hairstyles, see A.T. Croom, Roman Clothing and Fashion (Stroud 2002) 64-68. For more thorough treatments, see e.g. M. Mannsperger, Frisurenkunst und Kunstfrisur. Die Haarmode der römischen Kaiserinnen von Livia bis Sabina (Bonn 1998), M.E. Micheli and A. Santucci, Comae: Identità femminili nelle acconciature di età romana (Pisa 2011), and E. Bartman, “Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment”, American Journal of Archaeology 105, 2001, 1-25, which is useful on how the hair was put together. A further article on the practicalities of how the hair was set in place is J. Stephens, “Ancient Roman Hairdressing: on (Hair)pins and Needles”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 21, 2008, 110-132. There is a splendid bronze head in Princeton with its hair in a not-dissimilar style that gives good evidence for a fine hair-net: I. Jenkins and D. Williams, “A Bronze Portrait Head and Its Hair Net”, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 46:2, 1987, 8-15.

To judge by the treatment at the neck, the head was originally inserted in a statue. It is now mounted on a marble base. Perhaps from Asia Minor.

Sotheby (London), Sale Cat., 6 December 1971, no. 156 (ill.); J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 94-5.