Over-life-sized marble portrait, probably of the empress Sabina

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This imposing head probably comes from a statue of Sabina, wife of the emperor Hadrian. The face was originally surmounted by a very high, ovoid hairpiece covered with small curls, a style that was fashionable at the court of Trajan in about A.D. 100. The upper part of the hairpiece was carved separately and added onto the shelf-like area above the forehead. In back, the hair is arranged like that of a classical statue of Venus, goddess of love, with long locks falling forward over the shoulders. Sabina, grandniece of the emperor Trajan, was married to Hadrian, his ward and protégé, in A.D. 100. It is unlikely that an over-life-sized statue of the girl would be commissioned in the years before A.D. 117 when Hadrian became emperor, but it must have been carved fairly soon after, given the high hairpiece that was already out of style. As was quite common, the statue probably represented the young empress as Venus, combining contemporary elements with the traditional iconography of a goddess.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art