This head of Athena references Archaic Greek art, like the Artemis of Pompeii reconstruction nearby. A decorative band stretches over her stiffly organized row of wavy locks. While scientific analyses have not confirmed painted polychromy, the deeply carved eyes once held colored glass inlays. An attachment hole on the top of the head also indicates that the goddess wore an Attic helmet with a neck guard and a tall crest that was probably cast in bronze.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Marble head of Athena
Period:Augustan or Julio-Claudian
Date:ca. 27 BCE–68 CE
Culture:Roman
Medium:Marble, Island
Dimensions:H. 9 3/8 in. (23.8 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1912
Accession Number:12.157
[Until 1912, with Ettore Jandolo, Rome]; acquired in 1912, purchased from E. Jandolo.
Robinson, Edward. 1913. "Two Roman Heads." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8(3): p. 52.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1913. "Department of Classical Art: Recent Accessions of 1912." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8(2): p. 29.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1917. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 191, fig. 117, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 306–7, fig. 216, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 306–7, fig. 216, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Christine Alexander. 1939. Augustan Art: An Exhibition Commemorating the Bimillennium of the Birth of Augustus. p. 4, fig. 4, New York: Marchbanks Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1950. The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 3rd edn. pp. 185, 531, fig. 533, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1954. Catalogue of Greek Sculptures. no. 23, p. 19, pls. 23a–c, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1984. Vol. 2: Aphrodisias-Athena. "Athena/Minerva," p. 1079, no. 61, pl. 788, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Hermary, Antoine and Daniel Brentchaloff. 2000. "Hermès double de Fréjus." Monuments et mémoires, 78: pp. 70–71, figs. 16a-16b.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 408, pp. 354, 486, 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. no. 65, pp. 36, 170–71, 174, 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.
