Attic Bearded Head from a Grave Relief

380 BCE or later · Sculpture

May one see it?

Not receiving at present

Harvard Art Museums

Cambridge, United States

It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.

Checked: 3 days ago
In this state since: Sep 27, 2026
Source: The museum

On the map Museum page

About the sculpture

Bearded Head

The bridge of the nose is chipped away, and there is damage elsewhere, especially at the beard on the subject's lower right cheek.

This head from an Attic grave relief is turned to its left, and the youngish man may have been gazing slightly downward, at a seated figure. This Athenian head has traditional elements in common with the heroes and priests or magistrates from the East Frieze of the Parthenon, but the complete work would have shown an Attic Stele in the conservative or revivalist style of the fourth century B.C.

Read on

On a stele in the Piraeus Museum (no. 386), Hippomachos stands at the left, extending his right hand to old Kallias who is seated to the left on an elegant chair. This monument has been placed in a group dated around 380 BC, or very slightly later (Diepolder, 1931, p. 39, pl. 23). The man on the left (Hippomachos) leans slightly forward toward his seated companion, presumably his old father. Hair, rough beard, and face made to appear flat and round with large-lidded eyes and thick, parted lips of Hippomachos are all details that are exactly like those of the Watkins-Harvard head. Indeed, it would seem this head came from a similar stele, probably carved by the same sculptor. Jiří Frel has named him "Le sculpteur de Chairedemos,” after the famous (two) walking-warrior relief of Chairedemos and Lykeas, also in the Piraeus Museum (no. 385) (Frel, 1969, pp. 23, 59, pl. VIII).

This stele was carved at the end of the fifth century B.C., thus forming the transition between the Athenian worlds before her final defeat by Sparta and the new vistas opened by the Macedonian attacks on the declining Persian Empire.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Harvard Art Museums