Description:
Marble head on wood base

Label Text:
Nowadays, careful preservation of archaeological material is customary. Artifacts are prized for their age and the clues that they can offer about early societies. However, most ancient sculpture discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries underwent some restoration. Collectors favored complete, seemingly undamaged works, prompting sculptors to refigure fragments. This head, likely created in the 3rd century CE, may once have occupied the garden of a Roman house. However, it has been significantly altered since then, probably in the 19th century. The small size of the face compared to the hair, large size of the nostrils relative to the nose, and unusually deep eyes are all evidence of recarving.

-Taylor Anderson, Art Museum Advisory Board Fellow, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum (Sept. 2016)

Tags:
ancient; archaeology

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+2015.22

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.