A Marble Portrait Bust of a Lady, Roman Imperial, Julio-Claudian, early 1st Century A.D.

wearing a tunic and cloak draped over her shoulders, with commanding countenance, her eyes drilled in the inner corners, the centrally parted wavy hair drawn back in multiple overlapping segments over the forehead and temples, bound in a braid, gathered into an elaborate chignon at the back, and falling in two long corkscrew curls over the shoulders, a cluster of drilled circular curls escaping in front of each ear; the nose formerly restored in painted plaster, the bust originally mounted on an inverted column capital.

private collection, Paris
Drouot Richelieu, Paris, July 12th, 1994, no. 144, illus. (with restored nose)
London art market, 1997

The various components of this lady's elaborate coiffure do not appear to occur together in any other known examples of Julio-Claudian portrait sculpture; for the overlapping curls, braid, and chignon, see Sotheby's, New York, June 13th, 2002, no. 112 (Livia, formerly with nodus); for the long curls falling over the shoulders see Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen, no. 4 (Agrippina); for the circular curls over the temples see Louvre, Catalogue des portraits romains, vol. 1, nos. 79-80 (Antonia Minor).