Portrait Bust of a Girl

c. AD 250–75

Portrait Bust of a Girl, c. AD 250–75. Italy, Roman, mid-3rd Century. Marble; overall: 52.1 cm (20 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1951.288 This portrait bust depicts a young child, perhaps three or four years old, with soft, fleshy cheeks and delicate features. The neck is slight, the skull relatively large and round, with closely cropped hair indicated by fine incisions. Although this hairstyle may appear masculine today, the child wears a high-belted chiton, a long garment usually worn by women and girls. Together with the rope running diagonally across the chest, this suggests a female funerary portrait, perhaps showing the deceased in the guise of the huntress Diana. This portrait of a young girl was thought for many years to represent a boy.