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A Roman marble portrait head of a woman image 1
A Roman marble portrait head of a woman image 2
A Roman marble portrait head of a woman image 3
A Roman marble portrait head of a woman image 4
Lot 109W

1 May 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

£20,000 - £25,000

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A Roman marble portrait head of a woman
Circa 1st Century A.D.
Possibly Agrippina the Younger, depicted with her hair centrally-parted, the front section dressed in waves with drilled details, curls clustered along her forehead, with the remainder tied in a double braid secured with a band at the back of her neck, depicted with youthful features and a small smiling mouth, 12¾in (32.5cm) high

Footnotes

Provenance:
English private collection.
With Galerie Chenel, Paris in 2008.
French private collection, acquired in the 1950s.

Literature:
The simple classicising coiffure of female portrait sculpture in the Augustan Period became more elaborate in the later Julio-Claudian period. Posthumous portraits of Livia boast the addition of corkscrew curls accentuated with drilling.

A similar arrangement of curls and the double braided knot at the nape of the neck can be seen in a portrait of Agrippina the Younger in the Galleria degli Uffizi: cf. D. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, Yale, 1992, p. 140. This portrait also demonstrates similar rounded features and down-turned eyes.

Additional information

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