Woman's Head with Crown (500s BCE): Art, History and Details

Woman's Head with Crown (500s BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This terracotta sculpture depicts a woman with a wide headdress that is partly broken off. Her face is rendered in an Archaic style, with her mouth and eyes in low relief and her lips lifting upward in a serene smile. Originally, details such as the eyes and decoration on the headdress would probably have been painted on the surface of the sculpture.

Object facts

• Title: Woman's Head with Crown
• Date: 500s BCE
• Culture: Greek, Sicily(?)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 15.8 cm (6 1/4 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1926.516

A detail from the museum

In ancient Greek sculpture, a wide crown often denoted a matron deity like Hera or Demeter.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

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.