Inv. Scu 46

Parian marble statue made according to the type known as Aspasia in the Roman period, especially as the base of portrait heads. The type was made in Campanian area already in the 1st century BC, even if it was long believed that the type had not been copied prior to the Hadrianic period.

The female statue, in tunic and cloak, is characterized by the extreme rigidity of the cloak, that completely envelops the figure, on the model of the so-called Aphrodite Sosandra, sculpted by Calamis in the first half of the 5th century BC. Only the right arm emerges, brought forward at waist height, from the long drapery that only hints at the shape of the body beneath.

The face is dominated by the shape of the eyes, enormous with a marked incision of the pupils and irises. The woman, slightly turned towards the left, has a hairstyle with a central partition and a series of waves that follow the profile of the skullcap; on the nape, there is a sort of flattened toupet.

If it is true that most of the copies seem to date to the Hadrianic-Antonine period, the finding of the headless copy in Stabiae in a level predating the eruption of AD 79 makes it possible now to date the introduction of the type in the Campanian area at least to the 1st century AD.

Among the replicas, precisely the copy found in Baia, today in the National Museum of Naples, shows the greatest affinity of treatment with the one in the Capitoline Museums: they both share the same composed heaviness in the rendering of the folds of the cloak and the pronounced rounding of the crests of the individual folds.

The statue was part of the Collection of the Cardinal Alessandro Albani.