Portrait of a Woman Wearing an Attic Helmet

Roman art

This portrait of a woman wearing an Attic helmet is of unknown provenance. The figure’s forehead is marked by deep horizontal lines, she has heavy circles around her eyes, which have slightly incised irises, furrowed brows and a double chin, emphasising her mature age. The Attic helmet, a clear reference to a warrior goddess (Athena/Minerva, Virtus or Roma), reflects a fashion, popular among freedmen and members of the middle class, for commissioning portraits in the guise of deities. The choice of a warrior goddess was, however, rare. Although we do not have any information about how the Borghese sculpture was originally displayed, it was likely funerary, in keeping with a custom of erecting commemorative statues that celebrated the virtues of the deceased.

Object details

Commentary

This portrait of a matron wearing an Attic helmet, of unknown provenance, was inserted in a modern bust during a nineteenth-century restoration. The figure has an intense, severe gaze and her withered face is represented with strong realism. The treatment of the features in the Borghese portrait does not hide the figure’s mature age, describing the deep lines that mark her forehead, fine wrinkles to the sides of her small mouth, heavy circles under her eyes, furrowed brow framing her eyes, which have slightly incised irises, and double chin. This type of realism was typical of the Trajanic age and is even found in a few portraits of Pompeia Plotina, Trajan’s wife (see Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. MC 439; Guglielmi 2011, p. 398, no. 6.13), which the present portrait seems to vaguely resemble, in the shape of the eyebrows, eyes and mouth.

The Attic helmet, a clear reference to a warrior goddess (Athena/Minerva, Virtus or Roma), can be explained by the fashion for commissioning portraits in forma deorum (in the guise of deities) that was popular among freedmen and members of the middle class and became quite widespread in the Flavian period (Lo Monaco 2011a). The goddesses typically chosen were, however, the various Aphrodites as well as Spes, Fortuna, Hygieia (see Lo Monaco 2011b, p. 356), Artemis and Demeter. Warrior goddesses were more rare, known from inscriptions in the case of members of the Julio-Claudian gens and, in the private sphere, examples like the Flavian head of an old woman wearing a helmet that was previously in the Alberici Collection in Velletri and is now lost (see Moreno 2004) and the colossal helmeted head in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, which some scholars argue is a portrait of Julia Domna, an acolyte of Athena who was then elevated to the status of Augusta during the visit of Caracalla and his mother to Thessaloniki in 211 CE Despinis et al 1997, pp. 97–98).

Although we do not have any information about how the Borghese sculpture was originally displayed, it was likely funerary, in keeping with the custom of erecting commemorative statues that celebrated the virtues of the deceased. One example is the Trajanic tomb of Iulia Proculo, in the necropolis Isola Sacra at Portus.

The Borghese head can be inserted within the same chronological period.

Jessica Clementi