Getty Museum

Head from a Statue of a Male Figure

Date

about 500 B.C.

Medium

Limestone

Culture

Cypriot

Department

Sculpture

Institution

Getty Museum

The head belongs to a statue of a bearded man. The hair is arranged with individual, circular curls along the hairline, overlaid with a laurel wreath, 4.2 cm wide, then in a series of ten vertical rows of hair over the crown. The beard is divided into a series of four horizontal rows of hair. The proper right ear is well-formed and modeled; the proper left has only part of the pinna remaining at the break. The mouth is an incised line gently curving upward. The eyes are flat with thin almond-shaped eyelids. The almond-shaped eyes, close beard, cap-like hair, and sharp modeling of the Getty head are characteristic of the so-called Archaic Ionian style in Cyprus. One of the most common attributes of male and female Cypriot figures of both the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. is a wreath of leaves. Myrtle, laurel and ivy are often represented, but sometimes the species depicted is not identifiable. These wreathed figures represent votaries associated with a divinity.

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