Young Woman with a Spear (c. 50–200 CE): Art, History and Details

Young Woman with a Spear (c. 50–200 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This smiling female figure has her hair tied up to one side, wound around with an embroidered strip of cloth. She stands akimbo with her upper garment removed and tied in a loose looped knot at her side. A broad girdle holds up her clinging, diaphanous skirt. She has the ideal female form of a young mother, and since she holds a spear, she may have served a protective function.

Object facts

• Title: Young Woman with a Spear
• Date: c. 50–200 CE
• Culture: Afghanistan, Begram, Kushan period
• Type: Ivory
• Technique: ivory
• Dimensions: Overall: 9 x 4 x 1.7 cm (3 9/16 x 1 9/16 x 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Kushan
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1985.106

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Czuma, Stanislaw J., and Rekha Morris. Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.
• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1985." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (1986): 26-71.
• Hambly, Gavin. Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

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.