Head of a Veiled Woman of the Sosandra Type
Unknown (Roman, after Kalamis) (Kalamis active c. 470-440 BC) · 100-150 AD
A woman's head, veiled, with wavy hair drawn in bands across the brow and hidden beneath the edge of a cloak pulled over the head. The face is grave and still, the eyes wide, the mouth small; nothing about it flatters. The head is only twenty nine centimetres of ancient marble; the bust beneath is a modern mount, and the nose and top of the skull were restored, most recently in a conservation campaign in the year 2000 that also reattached the edges of the veil.
The type is known as the Sosandra, after a bronze Aphrodite by Kalamis that stood on the Athenian Acropolis around four hundred and sixty BC and was praised by the satirist Lucian for its modest smile and veiled head. Earlier scholars called the type Aspasia, after an inscribed copy. The Roman marble here was carved in the first half of the second century AD, probably in Italy, and belongs to the old holdings of the Louvre. Compare it with the Praxitelean nudes in the room: this is Aphrodite before she undressed, in the severe style of the generation just before the Parthenon.
Did You Know? The satirist Lucian, describing the perfect woman, borrowed the modest smile and veil from the Sosandra of Kalamis, the statue this head copies.
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