Marble Head of a Man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2007

Marble head of a man
Greek, South Italian, Tarentine, 3rd century BC

Accession # 1997.24

This head of a young man with wavy, upswept hair turns slightly toward the left. The parted lips and frowning eyebrows give the face an anguished expression appropriate to a funerary context. The head, preserved to the base of the neck and roughed out behind, was made for insertion onto a torso, probably carved from material less expensive than marble such as limestone. This suggests that it belongs to a western Greek workshop where imported Greek marble was used sparingly.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.