Greek, Hellenistic, 2nd century B.C. - 1st century A.D.

Marble

H: 22 cm

Serial: 8558

Provenance: Ex- private collection, Montreal, acquired prior to 1998

Very beautiful marble head of a young boy with lively and graceful features. The face is slender and hollowed out by a mischievous smile that stretches the lips and the eyes. The cheekbones protrude. Large curls of hair are arranged in a crown around the ears. A wick gathered on the top of the forehead, forms a tuft. It is a children's hairstyle that many representations of ‘putti’ or Eros-child repeat. The chin and the tip of the nose were damaged, but the whole head shows a remarkable state of conservation.

The head belonged to a statue slightly smaller than life size. The idealized features as well as the hairstyle indicate that it is not a portrait but a representation of a god or a boy. The absence of an attribute does not clearly identify the character. The lines can, in fact, belong as much to a representation of Eros as to that of a statue depicting children carrying a pet or a fruit, playing or holding themselves by the shoulders or by the arm.

It was during the Hellenistic period that the taste for representing children in sculpture seemed to develop. New subjects representing them are invented without necessarily having a direct link with mythology. The statues representing them are placed both in private homes and in front of temples or in a funeral setting. Some sarcophagi are decorated with a procession of children playing and bearing the attributes of gods. The representation of the god Eros is also affected by the evolution of tastes. The young adolescent is therefore frequently portrayed as a young and charming little boy. The context, an attribute or a pair of wings generally makes it possible to distinguish it from simple representations of children. In the case of the marble head proposed here, it is difficult to indicate the identity of the character represented.

Several Roman statues bear witness to the development of the theme of children in the Hellenistic period. The Museum of Fine Art in Houston and the Capitoline Museums in Rome keep a few examples in marble. But the numerous terracotta statuettes testify to the success of this theme among a large section of the population.

The quality of the realization of the marble head speaks for a talented master, working in fine and pure marble for demanding customers and wealthy enough to afford an artisan trained in the best workshops.

Bibliography

Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Vol. III, 1. and 2., Zürich and München, 1986, Eros 41a.

MARY B. COMSTOCK AND CORNELIUS C. VERMEULE: Sculpture in Stone, The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, 1976.

HERBERT HOFFMAN: Ten Centuries that shaped the West, Greek and Roman Art in Texas Collections, Houston, 1971.

FRANÇOIS VILLARD et alii: Hellenistic Greece, 330-50 BC. J.-C., Paris, 1970.

CORNELIUS C. VERMEULE: Greek and Roman Sculpture in America, Masterpieces in Public Collections in the United States and Canada, Berkley and California, 1981.