A Roman Marble Portrait Bust of a Woman, Augustan, circa early 1st Century A.D.

carved for insertion into a herm, and wearing a stola, her head turned slightly to her left, her long hair drawn back over the ears in multiple braided strands, divided by a single braid pulled up above the forehead, falling in a fringe of ringlets over the forehead and temples, and tied over the nape of the neck, the hair in back with a circular vertical hole reaching down to the bottom of the bust; no restorations.

Mssrs. Pizzardi and Barberi, Ascona, early 1960s
Luigi Hagner, Lugano-Cureglia, late 1960s
Donati Arte Classica, Lugano
Rupert Wace Ancient Art, acquired from the above in 2006
Jean-David Cahn, Basel, acquired from the above
acquired by the present owner from the above in 2011

Rupert Wace Ancient Art, London, In Our Own Image: Gods and Mortals in Ancient Art, 2008, no. 21, illus.
Sotheby’s, New York, June 4th, 2009, no. 112, illus.

For a related example in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, inv. no. 6247, probably from the time of Livia, see M. Guidobaldi, ed., Ercolano. Tre secoli di scoperte, exh. cat. Naples, 2008, p. 279f., no. 113. Also see J. Raeder, Die antiken Skulpturen in Petworth House, 2000, pp. 179ff., no. 64, pl. 81f.; the author (op. cit., p. 180) notes that late Augustan portrait coiffures tend to combine heterogenous elements freely, such as the thin central braid which appears mostly on portraits of girls. For the fringe of ringlets over the forehead also see a head in the J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. no. 72.AA.129 (J. Frel, Roman Portraits in the Getty Museum, 1981, p. 34, no. 19).