Veiled Woman at The Louvre, Paris

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This young woman's face was amazingly well preserved due to the high quality of marble sculpting during the late Hellenistic period. Her delicate features were reminiscent of early Hellenistic creations from the workshop at Kos, showcasing the development of marble craftsmanship in Greece around 200 BC. The veiled figure's eyes were half-open and her thin-lipped mouth revealed a slight smile as she wore fine, sinuous plaits that formed a halo around her oval face. The head was discovered on Anaphe Island in the Cyclades in 1823 by Guillaume Alby, the French Vice Consul in Santorini. He purchased it along with a clothed statue of a woman and later became part of the Louvre collection in 1898 as a bequest from Madame Faugère. The head was originally part of a funerary statue that depicted the deceased wearing a veil. It was sculpted separately from the body, and a stone tenon on its base was inserted into a mortise in the bust - a technique widely used in the Cyclades and Asia Minor. This method allowed for greater flexibility when adding heads to existing bodies, as seen with other similar pieces in the Louvre collection, such as those from Tralles and Apollonia in Epeiros. This technique was not unique to the Greek world, but also employed in other Mediterranean regions, highlighting the cultural exchange and shared artistic practices of that time.