Female head. Rome, 1st century A.D.

Female head. Rome, 1st century A.D.
Limestone.
Provenance: G.M.H. private collection, London. In his possession since the 1980s.
Measurements: 12 x 10 x 8 cm; 18 cm total height.
A Roman head carved in the round from limestone, depicting a young woman with a rounded face, large eyes, and a closed mouth, hinting at a smile. The hair is rendered with parallel, undulating incisions and is gathered at the nape of the neck in a coiled braid.
The Romans introduced two significant innovations to the world of sculpture: portraiture and historical relief, neither of which existed in the Greek world. However, they followed Greek models for much of their sculptural production, a foundation that in Rome would blend with the Etruscan tradition. Following their initial contacts with Classical Greece through the colonies of Magna Graecia, the Romans conquered Syracuse in 212 B.C., a wealthy and important Greek colony located in Sicily, adorned with a large number of Hellenistic works. The city was sacked and its artistic treasures taken to Rome, where the new style of these works soon replaced the Etruscan-Roman tradition that had prevailed until then. Shortly thereafter, in 133 B.C., the Empire inherited the kingdom of Pergamon, home to an original and thriving school of Hellenistic sculpture. The enormous Pergamon Altar, “The Gallic Suicide,” and the dramatic group “Laocoön and His Sons” were three of the key creations of this Hellenistic school. Furthermore, after Greece was conquered in 146 B.C., most Greek artists settled in Rome, and many of them devoted themselves to making copies of Greek sculptures, which were very much in vogue at the time in the capital of the Empire. Thus, numerous copies of works by Praxiteles, Lysippos, and classical works from the 5th century B.C. were produced, giving rise to the Neo-Attic school of Rome, the first neoclassical movement in the history of art. However, between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century B.C., a shift occurred in this Greek purist trend, culminating in the creation of a national school of sculpture in Rome, from which works such as the Altar of Aenobarbus emerged, already introducing a typically Roman narrative concept that would become a chronicle of daily life and, at the same time, of the success of its political model. This school would be the forerunner of the great imperial art of Augustus, during whose reign Rome became the most influential city in the Empire and also the new center of Hellenistic culture—as Pergamon and Alexandria had been before—attracting a large number of Greek artists and artisans. During the Augustan era, Rome contributed to the continuity and renewal of a tradition that already enjoyed centuries of prestige and had shaped the character of all art in the region. In this new phase, Greek aesthetics and techniques would be applied to themes specific to this new Rome. Following the idealization of the Augustan period, the realism of the Flavian era, and the subsequent Baroque style of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Roman sculpture—shaped by the presence of Christianity—tended to become dehumanized, growing more idealized and symbolic. The concern for realism was lost, and there was a shift toward a stylized approach that sought to capture the ideal, the soul, or the divine—rather than the human appearance of the figures. In keeping with this new aesthetic, the carving took on a great hardness, and the figures acquired a noble, solemn dignity.