On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Marble head of a figure
Technical analysis: Multiband imaging, raking light examination, optical microscopy, X-ray radiography, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopyThis fine-grained white marble head and neck with traces of the shoulders are all that survive from a figure that would have measured approximately 64.0 cm high. The left chin and right cheek are chipped, otherwise the head is complete and intact. The head is lyre-shaped and backward tilted with a broad rounded chin and a long, wedge-shaped, and well-centered nose in high relief. The cylindrical neck is delineated from the head by a shallow v-shaped incision at the back. There are traces of a similar incision at the base of the neck at the shoulders.
It is covered in beige-colored accretions that are paler in color on the reverse, perhaps due to its having been buried. On either side of the face are prominent lozenge shaped ghost eyes that include their circular pupils. The right eye may include triangular eyelashes. Just above this set of eyes is a possible third eye on the left side. At the top of the head is a faint hairline, or the edge of a head-scarf or polos. On the left cheek is a group of nine red dots, arranged 3 x 3, in a pigment identified as cinnabar. There are traces of a similar arrangement of dots on the right cheek. Additional traces of cinnabar are visible on the forehead, perhaps from painted hair locks, and the upper and lower grooves of the neck. In some areas the pigment extends over areas of erosion and accretions. Differential weathering at the back of the head highlights the pattern of hair. No pigment remains are visible on the marble surface and/or below the accretion that still covers portions of the back of the head. There is scattered old wear in the stone under the accretions, as well as more recent looking abrasions around the outer edges of the fragment.
Georgios Gavalas, Dorothy Abramitis, Federico Carò and Elizabeth Hendrix
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