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 head of a goddess A fragment from a life sized statue, this face from the chin to the diadem with some of the hair survives here. The iron pins jutting from smoothly contoured breaks tell us that this ancient fragment was incorporated into an 18th Century recreation of a head or statue. Someone in modern times deconstructed the restored piece, liberating the ancient fragment, presented here just as it survived from antiquity. The restored nose was left, so that one is not distracted from the beauty of the face by a gaping hole. With a head such as this one cannot know for sure which goddess is represented, Hera wears a diadem such as here but so does Aphrodite and Artemis in some types. In addition the face, while beautiful, has a specificity about it that indicates that it may in fact be a portrait of a woman of high rank in the guise of a goddess. This was not unusual, many matrons had themselves depicted as goddesses, some examples are quite jarring, a beautiful draped body topped by the head of a hag. This woman is a beauty so the original statue must have been quite a nice one. Interestingly enough, although just a fragment, it is precisely datable, the way the eyes are drilled along with the carving of the hair, date this to the late Antonine period, from about 150 A.D. to 180 A.D.
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