Italian, Rome, mid-19th century, After the Antique

E. Tarizzo and A. Popa, The Sculpture Museum, cat. Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, London, 2020, no. 14

This beautifully carved head of a young woman follows an ancient Roman marble in the Sala dei Busti of the Museo Pio Cementino, which has traditionally been identified with the goddess Isis, but more likely represents a portrait. The Roman head is considered to be a copy of a now-lost Greek original from the fifth or fourth century BC. Of Egyptian origin, the cult of Isis spread to the Graeco-Roman world during the Hellenistic period, and the goddess was depicted in art with a headdress surmounted by a disc, which may have inspired the elaborate hairstyle exhibited by the present model. 

During his activity in Rome, the English sculptor Joseph Gott (1786-1860) carved a marble version of the same head, which was acquired by C.D.E. Fortnum in 1851 and is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Like Gott's version, the present marble varies from the antique model in its broadening of the truncation at the chest, indicating that it was carved by a skilled sculptor in Rome in the early or mid-19th century.