This portrait of a stern Trajanic matriarch has much in common with images of Trajan’s wife, the empress Plotina. Two ancient points of attachment in the front once held a marble addition representing the high crescent-shaped hairpiece fashionable during that period.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Marble portrait bust of a woman
Period:Trajanic
Date:ca. 100–120 CE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Marble
Dimensions:H. 22 5/8 in. (57.4 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1914
Accession Number:14.130.7
Said to have been found in Rome
[Until 1914, with Paul Hartwig, Rome]; acquired in 1914, purchased from P. Hartwig.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1915. "Department of Classical Art: The Accessions of 1914." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10(2): p. 24, fig. 2.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1917. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 251, fig. 153, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 300–1, fig. 211, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 300–1, fig. 211, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1940. "A Rearrangement of Roman Portraits." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 35(10): p. 202.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1941. Roman Portraits, Vol. 2. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1948. Roman Portraits, 2nd edn. no. 63, p. iv, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Herrmann, Jr., J. J. 1991. "Rearranged Hair: A Portrait of a Women in Boston and Some Recarved Portraits of Earlier Imperial Times." Journal of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 3: pp. 47–48, fig. 20.
Varner, Eric R. 2000. From Caligula to Constantine : Tyranny & Transformation in Roman Portraiture p. 218 n. 7, Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.
Matheson, Susan B. 2000. "The Private Sector: Reworked Portraits Outside the Imperial Circle." From Caligula to Constantine : Tyranny & Transformation in Roman Portraiture, Eric R. Varner, ed. p. 73 n. 31, Atlanta, GA: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.
Bartman, Elizabeth. 2001. "Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment." American Journal of Archaeology, 105(1): p. 20 n. 106.
Zanker, Paul. 2016. Roman Portraits: Sculptures in Stone and Bronze in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 75, pp. 191, 204–5, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. p. 328, 331, New York: Scala Publishers.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
