Images of Roman empresses abound, appearing on coins, in relief and architectural sculpture, in cameos, and other small-scale luxury items. Elite women were often the benefactors of their cities and were honored with sculptural dedications in public spaces.

2023年1月18日 · Ancient Roman statues in the Museo archeologico nazionale (Venice) - Female funerary statue, small Herculaneum type (8 F)

2020年10月4日 · The seven women presented here cover the full social range, from the Roman empress Livia, to the freedwoman Regina and the mother Agrippina the Younger. On the surface, each fits into at least one of the archetypical categories.

Unearthed in 1711, the Herculaneum Women were the first significant finds at ancient Herculaneum, and they are among the best preserved of all the sculptures found there. Their discovery and legacy were explored in the recent exhibition The Herculaneum Women and the Origins of Archaeology.

Roman Female Statue Types Let’s take a closer look and hone our eyes to visually analyze different elements of the statues and the photographs to answer these questions.

This statue evokes the figures of seated, draped goddesses displayed in the pediments of the Parthenon, the renowned temple on the Acropolis in Athens. Among the Romans, this statue type was widely used for sculptures of female deities such as Juno (the Greek Hera), the consort of Jupiter (the Greek Zeus), as well as for portraits of empresses ...

In the second century CE, funerary statues of individual women depicted in the guise of Venus: the goddess’s sublime body typically joins individualized heads of Roman matrons. The women so portrayed were literally shown as the present-day embodiment of the peerless goddess of love.

Heralding the discovery of ancient Herculaneum, the sculptures are known today as the Large and Small Herculaneum Women. The excavation of these images of ideal female beauty …

This figure wears three layers of clothing: a sleeved chiton visible below the neck, which is tied with a looped knot at the waist; a second chiton or peplos, fastened on both shoulders; and a himation (cloak), draped over the left shoulder and the lower part of the body.

In contrast, the portrait statues of women, who did not have public roles nor the possibility of wearing different real "uniforms", seem at first endlessly variable. This dissertation evaluates the significance of the different options used for the portrait statues of women in the Roman world.