Marble head of a Ptolemaic queen

A marble head of a woman, carved with smooth, idealized features and wavy hair drawn back from the forehead and gathered at the back of the head. The neck is broken off at the base, and the surface shows fine tooling and a soft, polished finish. The head is set on a plain dark base against a black backdrop.

Look closer: The back of the hair is roughly worked, showing unfinished chisel marks along the right side of the head.

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 270–250 BCE

Medium

Marble

Source

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Size

3000 × 4000 px

Credit (appreciated, not required for public-domain works): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, The Bothmer Purchase Fund, Malcolm Hewitt Wiener, The Concordia Foundation and Christos G. Bastis Gifts and Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove Jr. Fund, 2002