Head of a Goddess, probably Demeter

Head of a Goddess, probably Demeter
Taras/Tarentum
South Italian, 4th–2nd c. BCE
Terracotta with traces of pigment
(2008.169)
Ex-coll. Wilhelm von Bode

This extraordinarily well-preserved female head is broken from a larger figure, probably prepared for a religious rite with a tall decorated crown, a stiff mantle/fillets falling to the shoulders, earrings, and hair dressed with corn ears/wheat sheafs (?) and poppy blossoms. Iconography suggests such heads represent the goddess Demeter, the goddess who symbolized agricultural regeneration in the Greek pantheon. The fertile lands of southern Italy made the cult of this goddess prevalent in the numerous Greek-founded cities. The goddess had widespread appeal, however, and her most famous cult site was Eleusis, near Athens. Another very similar head comes from the western Peloponnesos, but its precise provenance is unknown.

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