Statue of a Draped Woman

This marble sculpture wrapped in heavy drapery is an over-life-size portrait of an older patrician woman. Roman sculptors borrowed the idea of depicting heavily draped women from Greek statues of the Hellenistic period. The fabric hides the body, and the focus of the work becomes the clothing itself with its folds, creases, and contrasting textures. This body type was used for a wide range of female statues in the Hellenistic period, from goddesses to queens to anonymous women; only the head varied. Unlike Hellenistic statues, however, the portrait head of this statue is distinctively Roman. The identity of the female figure is unknown, but the large scale of the sculpture suggests that she was of exceptionally high stature.

The head (2016.38) was separated from this sculpture sometime between 1937 and 1971, when the Getty was first offered the torso of the statue. Believed to be lost, the head was on the art market for many years until it was discovered with a dealer in New York; it was sold to the Getty in 2016. After undergoing conservation, the head has been re-joined with the body.