Head of a Young Man in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, October 2009

Head of a Young Man
Roman, Imperial period
About AD 160-170 (modified about AD 220)
Marble

# 2004.2232

The ridge atop this head allowed attachment of a separate piece, now lost. The ridge is unusually tall, suggesting it may have supported a large wig of a sort fashionable among Roman women in the late second and early third centuries AD; alternately, the missing piece could have been a helmet pushed back above the forehead, as the goddess Minerva (Athena to the Greeks) wore hers. Either way, the wisps of a beard on both cheeks suggest the head was subsequently modified to portray a young man.

Text from the MFA label.