ClassificationsGreek and Roman Art
Portrait Bust of a Woman
CultureRoman
Datesecond half of the 1st Century BCE
Credit LineCarlos Collection of Ancient Art
Dimensions12 3/4 x 6 x 6 1/4 in. (32.4 x 15.2 x 15.9 cm)
Object number2008.041.001
Label TextThe late Republican period saw the development of a new style of portraiture, now known as ‘veristic’. In contrast to classicizing styles, which evoked the youthful beauty of 5th-century BC models, veristic portraits gave visual expression to Republican ideals of frugality, discipline, and authority gained through experience by emphasizing the appearance of age and the affects of hard work in the face of the sitter. As well as showing signs of maturity, this portrait of an older woman wears an unusual head-cloth, which characterizes her as a nurse (nutrix). Nurses in the Roman world were typically either enslaved or were ‘freedwomen’ – former slaves who had been manumitted by their masters. Such head-coverings are sometimes also depicted on funerary reliefs portraying freedwomen. It is possible that the family for whom this woman had worked commissioned the bust on her death. On an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century marble base.Exhibition HistoryMCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, February 2009 - January 2012
Annotations: George Cooke, Thomas Hope and the Lure of Antiquitiy, The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia, February 5 - July 22, 2012
MCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, September 2012 - August 26, 2013
MCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, September 25, 2013 - Present
Published ReferencesSotheby's New York, Antiquities (June 5, 2008), 58-59, lot 39.
Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women's Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation, 4th Edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 34, Figure 6.
ProvenanceEx private collection, Austria, from 1970s. Nagel Auktionen, Stuttgart, Germany, 2007, lot 1132. Purchased by MCCM from Sotheby's New York, June 5, 2008, lot 39.
Status
On viewCollections
- Greek and Roman Art
late 1st-early 2nd Century CE
2nd Century BCE
ca. 14 - 37 CE
late 1st-2nd Century CE
1st Century BCE
mid 2nd Century BCE
4th Century BCE
1st Century CE
2nd Century CE
late 1st Century BCE - early 1st Century CE
