Peaceable Athena in the Louvre

Peaceable Athena
Marble. H 230 cm. Roman copy from the 2nd century CE. Musée du Louvre Ma 530, Paris.

• Athena, helmeted and recognisable by her aegis, a sort of leather breastplate made of goat hide, edged with snakes and decorated with the head of the Gorgon Medusa, is dressed in a woollen peplos, the dissymmetrical flap of which is raised in the back, an uncommon arrangement allowing us to observe the presence of a girdle.
• This statue is a Roman replica of the Greek original created about the middle of the 4th century BC and identified by some with the Piraeus Athena, discovered in 1959: the bronze work reveals that the Roman copyist, aware of the constraints inherent in working the marble, modified the gesture of the right arm, initially extending forward, and conceived its placement on the hip so as to avoid a graceless prop.

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