Praying Woman in Porphyry
Unknown · Second century AD (?)
A woman more than two metres tall stands in a long tunic and a mantle of purple porphyry, her arms lifted in the ancient gesture of prayer, while her face, hands and feet are white marble and her sandals a dark green stone. The combination was standard for porphyry figures, which needed softer marble for the details of a face, and it gives the statue the look of a dressed-up column. The hair is parted in bands and gathered into a low bun. The whole is a composite: the head is ancient but from another work, mounted on this body at some point in the past.
The feet and sandals were made in the sixteenth century, and in 1780 the Roman restorer Vincenzo Pacetti added the diadem, nose, neck and forearms; the upper back was completed later. The body itself is Roman work, probably of the second century, of porphyry that was quarried in Egypt and perhaps carved there or in Italy. Bought in 1807 with the Borghese collection, the statue stands between its two porphyry columns as it might have in a Roman palace.
Did You Know? Her face, hands and feet are white marble because porphyry was too hard to carve the fine features of a portrait.
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