Head of Athena of the Velletri type

The stylistic quality and beauty of this head, designed to be slotted into a separately carved statue, mark it out as a particular masterpiece. It belonged to a scaled-down Roman copy of a colossal classical statue of Athena in Athens. The upright oval outline of the overall design elegantly combines the youthful face with the Corinthian helmet, pushed back onto the crown of the head. The maidenly visage and the warrior’s helmet perfectly capture the dual nature of Athena, who was not only the goddess of wisdom and culture, but also of warfare. Her divine responsibilities made her a fitting patron deity for Athens, the city that bore her name. Having led the Greek poleis to victory over the invading Persians in 490 and 480 BC, Athens went on to experience an unparalleled flowering of culture. The city honoured its virgin goddess with countless statues and festivals and naturally dedicated the main temple on its Acropolis to her: the Parthenon, whose name was taken from her epithet parthenos (‘virgin’). Our head belonged to a scaled-down version of an original sculpture, which was six cubits (approx. 350 cm or 11 feet 6 inches) tall and thus twice life-size, as the almost completely preserved, full-sized copy from Velletri (now in the Louvre) demonstrates. Images on Roman coins suggest that the goddess, draped in a himation and a cloak, originally held a spear in her right hand, while gazing down at a small attribute figure (probably a Nike) in her left. Scholars traditionally attributed the original statue to the sculptor Kresilas, based on the similarity between the head and the head of the Sciarra Amazon, which had previously also been attributed to Kresilas. Good evidence now suggests, however, that the Sciarra Amazon was, in fact, the work of Polykleitos (see our No. 93), which means that the statue of Athena must also have been by this important sculptor. Martha Weber suggests that the original may have been the statue of Athene Eirene, the goddess of peace, which Pausanias saw in the Athenian agora in the 2nd century AD, next to the prytaneion. Athena is never depicted in combat in classical sculpture, but she is always armed with a helmet, a lance, and sometimes a shield. She would therefore make a good monument to peace, the implication being that peace must be constantly defended with warlike strength but is always ultimately fragile. (tl)

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