Bust of Athena with an Aegis
Roman, 2nd Century AD
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
100 AD - 199 AD
Materials
Parian marble
Measurements
765 x 510 x 270 mm
Place of origin
Italy
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486380
Summary
Parian marble, Bust of Athena with an Aegis, Roman, 2nd century AD. A marble bust of Athena, of which the head is adapted from a Greek type and turns towards the right. The close fitting Attic helmet has a vizor decorated with a gorgoneion on a background of fish scales and ending in two volutes over the ears. From beneath the helmet the hair escapes in luxuriant masses and is bunched over the ears, it then falls over the shoulders in two long curls. The Antonine bust is draped in a garment of soft material. The breast is protected by a small aegis with a fringe of serpents.
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
74 (painted on front of socle)
Makers and roles
Roman, 2nd Century AD , 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. 124-25