This month’s sculpture from Hadrian’s Villa is a marble head of a female divinity, probably Persephone, the daughter of Demeter and queen of the underworld.
Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome
Carole Raddato CC BY-SA
The head is closely related to the head of Persephone, which is on display in the Museo Barracco in Rome (the Barracco-Budapest type female head, Inv. MB 85), and to the statue of Persephone recently excavated at Rione Terra near Naples and now in the Castello Aragonese in Baia (Kore-Persephone). Another marble head of Persephone from the Hadrianic era was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2013.
The head was probably part of a larger-than-life-size statue inspired by a Greek work in the Severe style of the 5th century BC. It was found in 1927 inside the cryptoporticus near the nymphaeum.
