Portrait of a Young Girl (c. 25–30 CE): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Young Girl (c. 25–30 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This bronze portrait has a boyish close-cropped hairstyle and rounded forehead. The irises of the eyes are now hollow but were once inlaid with material, possibly glass. The head was likely set into a body or bust and placed inside a tomb. This portrait head is distinctive for the particular arrangement of the comma-shaped locks of hair, which resembles portraiture during the later period of the reign of Tiberius (AD 25–30), a Julio-Claudian emperor. Some scholars believe that the earrings identify the figure as an Armenian prince, while others believe this to be a portrait of a young girl.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Young Girl
• Date: c. 25–30 CE
• Culture: Italy, Eastern Roman Empire
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 9.7 cm (3 13/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1985.138

A detail from the museum

The earrings this young girl wears are similar to a pair in the CMA collection (1985.174).

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "Year in Review for 1985," The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 73, no. 2, February 1986, p. 62, illus. p. 63.
• Kozloff, Arielle P. Classical Art: A Brief Guide to the Collection, the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland]: The Museum, 1989, p. 16.

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.