Maenad in a Fawn Skin
Unknown · 2nd century AD (?)
A tall woman in a belted peplos, with a fawn skin knotted across her chest and sandals on her feet, stands with a wreath of leaves and berries in her banded hair. The fawn skin, the nebris, marks her as a maenad, a follower of Dionysos, and the forearms that once carried her attributes have been remade in marble, so we cannot be sure what she held, perhaps a thyrsus or a cup. The head is ancient but was mounted on this body in modern times; the nose, lip, neck, top of the skull and left ear are restorations.
Like several statues in this hall, the figure is a composite assembled by restorers, and it is dated only broadly to the second century AD, probably in Italy. It came into the Louvre from a French collection seized during the Revolution. What remains striking is the drapery: the peplos falls in long vertical folds broken by the belt and the skin, a scheme borrowed from classical Greek statues of the fifth century BC and dressed up with Dionysiac attributes for a Roman garden or villa. Compare the peplos with the maenad carrying grapes displayed nearby.
Did You Know? Nobody knows what she originally held: both forearms, and whatever was in her hands, are the work of a restorer.
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