Incorrect Username, Email, or Password
This object does not yet have a description.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1978.512
Title
Head of a Young Warrior
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
sculpture, head
Date
c. 100 BCE
Period
Hellenistic period, Late
Culture
Greek
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/289154

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Marble
Dimensions
actual: 7.6 cm (3 in.)

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Nanette B. Rodney
Accession Year
1978
Object Number
1978.512
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
47

Head of a Young Warrior

The nose is broken away, and the ears are chipped. Details are rendered in a soft, summary fashion.

The face of this young warrior is fairly long, and the cheeks plump. The stiff, vertical, and somewhat frontal qualities of the head suggest that it was once part of a Hellenistic dedicatory or votive stele. Many of these stelai, and their counterparts for funerary purposes, show the subjects in frontal poses in architectural settings, as an example probably from Asia Minor in the Graf Lanckoronski collection in Vienna of a man of intellectual and athletic rather than military tendencies (Pfuhl, Möbius, 1977, I, p. 108, no. 254, II, p. 48); another, similar and helmetless head of a young man is on a stele in Istanbul from Madytos in the Thracian Chersonnesus (Pfuhl, Möbius, 1977, I, pp. 163-164, no. 538, II, pl. 83). The man ought to have been in the military service of a Hellenistic ruler or city, but Roman military personnel were buried in the Greek islands, Thrace, and Western Asia Minor at a date earlier than the imperial period.

This head is a good carving, in a traditional style found widely. The ultimate influence of Severe Style heads about 460 B.C. from Southern Italy or Sicily can be seen by comparison with a female figure with helmet-like headdress in the Museo Barracco, Rome (Schefold, Cahn, 1960, pp. 218, 220, no. 243, also pp. 58-59).

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

  • Fogg Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum Annual Report, 1978-1980 (Cambridge, MA, 1982), p. 108
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III and Amy Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 64, no. 47

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu