Bust of a Matron
Roman
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
170 AD - 229 AD
Materials
Luna marble
Measurements
540 x 460 mm
Place of origin
Italy
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486371
Summary
Luna marble, Bust of a Matron, Roman, late second century AD or beginning of third century AD. A portrait bust of a Roman matron. The head is turned sharply to the left with the gaze directed outward.The face is oval and the hair parted in the centre and drawn smoothly down on either side of the face. At the back it is arranged in a large flat chignon, in the style adopted by Julia Domnia. The 'vittae' are threaded through the chignon, from which four small locks escape onto the neck.
Provenance
?Collected by Charles, 2nd Earl of Egremont, thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72), arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M. Treasury.
Marks and inscriptions
65 (painted on the front and at the base of the bust)
Makers and roles
Roman, sculptor
References
Wyndham 1915 Margaret Wyndham, Catalogue of the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the Possession of Lord Leconfield, The Medici Society, 1915, p. 104-105