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Triple Hekate
Roman
Late Republican or Early Imperial Period
about 50 B.C.–A.D. 50
Medium/Technique
Marble
Dimensions
Height: 13 cm (5 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of William J. Young
Accession Number59.846
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsAncient Greece and Rome
ClassificationsSculpture
Catalogue Raisonné
Sculpture in Stone (MFA), no. 192; Sculpture in Stone and Bronze (MFA), p. 112 (additional published references).
DescriptionThe ensemble comes from a statue of the triple-bodied Hekate, a central-Greek divinity with Underworld connotations, a being sometimes thought of as a manifestation of Artemis as goddess of the night and the crossroads. The work is Archaistic in that it represents an attempt by a sculptor working about the time of Augustus (27 B.C. - A.D. 14), or slightly later, to create a statue with reminiscences of Athenian style in the generation before the Persian Wars, that is, around 520 B.C. The hair is far from Archaic, being made modern in the late Hellenistic sense. The crown rising between the three heads may recall the headdress of a Hekate of the fifth century B.C. for the sculptor Alkamenes among others created such images in Athens and other parts of Greece.
The faces are damaged and worn, as is the top of the polos; otherwise, the surfaces are roughly as carved.
The faces are damaged and worn, as is the top of the polos; otherwise, the surfaces are roughly as carved.
ProvenanceBy date unknown:Edward Perry Warren collection; around 1928: presented by Edward Perry Warren to William J. Young of the MFA Research Laboratory; gift of William J. Young to MFA, November 12, 1959