This Roman marble head and torso preserves an Athena whose protective equipment has become part of an elegant sculptural design. The aegis forms a collar-like covering, with the Gorgon’s head at its center. The helmet itself is lost, but its lining can still be recognized above the hair.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates the work to the first or second century CE and suggests that its Greek prototype was probably bronze. That distinction gives the sculpture two histories: the history of the surviving Roman object and the history of the earlier artistic model it recalls.
Look first at the relationship between face, drapery, and aegis. The goddess’s identity is conveyed through surviving details, even though the arms and helmet no longer complete the original composition.