36. Julia, daughter of the emperor Titus

The perfectly preserved head is perhaps the most charming female portrait in the collection. About 90.

37/38 These two ladies are outsiders, not in fashion or in birth but in their geographicai origin. While Julia and the other ladies’ portraits were cleariy carved in Italy, the bluish grained marble in these examples points to Asia Minor. The most striking iocai feature is the biock of raw marbie supporting the nape to prevent easy breakage. Both statues were likely carved in the same workshop, if not by the same hand, possibiy as pendants or as parts of a iarger group. The sculptor dutifully followed the fashions of the time, as he used the drill to make circular cuts in the mass of hair over the conicai forehead, but there is iittle if anything pic-toriai in the overail approach. The resuit gives rather the impression of cutting the stone to shape rather than discreetly carving it to emphasize subtleties of modeiing. He was a competent craftsman at work, typical of the artisans who perpetuated Greek traditions all over the eastern areas of the Roman Empire. The portraiture is stereotyped too. The sharp features of the oid lady appear at first very personal, but on closer inspection, although a well-defined individuaiity seems to emerge, the sagging cheeks and deep wrinkles are just conventional indications of her advanced age. The young woman conforms to similar conventions like a doll, without any personaiity to animate her features. Both statues are preserved approximateiy from the waist up. Because so few statue bodies are included in the Getty collection, they stand out as speciai. In reality they show the usual procedure for Roman portrait statuary: even more than the heads, the bodies repeat standard Greek types. The matron uses the type calied the Large Herculaneum Woman; the type of the young woman is yet to be identified. One could imagine that the statues were done to glorify two woman of a rich local family that spent money on an official monument or public charity. Perhaps the family even paid for their own statues. Ail things considered, both statues are rather weil preserved and not badly carved, but they leave the viewer unmoved.