Funerary Half-Statue of a Draped Woman from Cyrene
Unknown · c. 350 BC
A woman emerges from the stone to the waist, her hair drawn back in a band, a heavy cloak over her shoulders. With her left arm bent she draws a veil aside from her face, and on that arm coils a bracelet in the form of a snake. The statue was never meant to have a lower half: it is a half-figure, complete as you see it, made to stand on a tomb so that the dead woman seemed to rise out of the earth. The marble has taken on a warm ochre patina from centuries in the ground. The calm face is a type rather than a portrait.
Cyrene, in the hills of eastern Libya, was one of the richest Greek cities of Africa, and its rock cut necropolis was lined with these half-statues, some veiled and faceless, some, like this one, showing the features. They belong to a purely local custom. The figure was carved around 350 BC and arrived at the Louvre in 1852, in the years when the French consul Vattier de Bourville was exploring the tombs of Cyrene and shipping his finds to Paris.
Did You Know? Cyrene's cemeteries were full of half-statues like this one, set on the tombs so that the dead seemed to rise from the ground.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.