DiscussionPortrait head of woman. Athens. Fourth century DESCRIPTION (Subject)Portrait head of a woman, pentelic marble; H 28.5 cm, W 26.5 cm, D 23 cm. The whole face is battered off leaving only the outline of the right eye and of the nose. At the backside the upper part of the skull is chipped off. The surface where not battered is heavily washed; bits of the original surface are still visible in the hair at the right side and in the flash adjacent to the hairline at the same side. At the back a smoothed area concealing the neck could be either a piece of garment or just a support (Harrison 1953, 70). The hair is treated as an arrangement of compact forms articulated by shallow lines by a fine chisel. The delineation of the hair is only visible at the front and at the sides while the back and the skull are blank. The 'central braid' appearing at the backside (see below, 'Description (Subject)') is of rectangular shape, hence the head was never worked out at the back. The hair is set against the flesh by a continuous drilled or chiselled line. Under the left eye a deeply cut circular line marks the lower boundary of the eye which was embedded in the surroundings with a sharp caesura. PROVENANCE AND CURRENT LOCATION The head was found 1933 in the demolition of a modern house on the Athenian Agora. The grid square J 8 given by Harrison 1953, 69 is the region of the southwestern angle of the temple of Ares, west of the northwestern angle of the North court of the so-called 'Palace of the Giants' (grid squares in Harrison 1953 pl. 49). The head is today in Athens, Agora Museum inv. no. S 248. DESCRIPTION (Object) The head depicts a lady with a broad face and voluminous hair arranged into an 'encircling braid' coiffure. The arrangement of the hair is hard to comprehend; it is arranged into four discernible units or layers. The first layer is parted in the middle above the brow and surrounds the face in wavy strands which are drawn back to the ears; the ears are covered save the earlobes. The second layer of hair lying above the first one covers the skull like a thick cap. It starts behind the ears and raises to the forehead leaving only a narrow bend of the first layer visible. A thick bulge of hair surrounds this second layer. The delineation of the hair in this bulge by diagonal parallel lines indicates that it was twisted. The fourth unit is the braid which rises from the centre of the bulge at the backside. Two vertical strokes in the 'bulge' below this braid are not in line with the braid; they are rather damages than indicators that the braid was looped around the bulge. The encircling-braids hairstyle was a visual representation of the female associated with virtues like piety and chastity; the voluminous hair, moreover, signals matronal dignity, and the elaborate arrangement points out the social statues of the portrayed (Schade 2003, 102-3). The size of the head led Harrison 1953, 70 to the assumption that it must represent an empress. DATE The 'encircling-braid' hairstyle is first testified to by coin portraits of Galeria Valeria from 308 (Schade 2003, 26 with n. 187); it was, with a wide range of variability, in fashion throughout the 4th century (Schade 2003, 96-7). Harrison 1953, 70 assessed the massive forms of the head as an indicator of a date earlier than the theodosian late 4th century and the emphasized eyes as still discernable from the heavy pouch as an indicator of Constantinian date. According to Schade 2003, 203 the fine hachure of the hair is an indicator of the theodosian period. The fine hachure does indeed feature on many heads, not only female, which traditionally have been dated to the late 4th or even 5th century whereas the portraiture of the Constantinian period appears to articulate the hair in a rougher way. None of the heads in question is, however, securely dated, and the fine hachure is certainly no common feature of the late-4th-century portraiture. The argument remains beyond proof; we therefore assign, if Schade's argument appears favourable to us, broad outer dates in the 4th century to our head. Main ReferenceSchade, K., Frauen in der Spätantike--Status und Repräsentation, Mainz 2003, pp. 202-3 no. I 43Harrison, E. B., Portrait Sculpture: The Athenian Agora I, Princeton, N. J. 1953, pp. 69-70 no. 54 pl. 35 |
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