Head of a Foreign Warrior (300–200 BCE): Art, History and Details

Head of a Foreign Warrior (300–200 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This miniature head depicts a man with wild curls that still retain their original red pigment. He is immediately revealed as a non-Greek by his carved mustache, associated with Celtic tribes, and cone-shaped hat called a Phrygian cap, associated with eastern peoples such as the Persians. During the Hellenistic period, various non-Greek peoples served as mercenaries or fought against the Greek kingdoms, and these foreign warriors were depicted extensively in art.

Object facts

• Title: Head of a Foreign Warrior
• Date: 300–200 BCE
• Culture: Greece, Alexandria or the Levant
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble with traces of paint
• Dimensions: Overall: 10.5 cm (4 1/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1929.440

A detail from the museum

There is a small notch below the cap's crest that likely held an attachment, now lost.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Howard, Rossiter. “A Gallic Warrior.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 17, no. 8 (1930): 154–59.
• Bieber, Margarete. "Greek Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art," Art in AmericaVol. 31, no. 3. (July, 1943). pp. 112-126.
• Bieber, Margarete, and Bollingen Foundation Collection (Library of Congress). The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age. Columbia Bicentennial Editions and Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.