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Lot Essay
The goddess is depicted standing with her weight on her left leg, with the right leg bent forward. She wears a long peplos with a thick overfold rippling across her upper thighs, with her sandaled feet emerging from below the hem. Her scaly aegis, centered by a gorgoneion, drapes diagonally over her left shoulder and is cinched by a belt high on her waist. Along the edges of the aegis are coiled snakes; the upper edge of the aegis folds forward upon itself. Suspended around her neck and draped over her shoulders is a long himation that fans behind her like a cape, secured at the front by a rosette brooch. In her left hand she supports a convex circular shield centered by a frontal head of a gorgoneion, the rim with scrolling vines in relief. In her other, she likely once held a spear. High on her head she wears a Corinthian helmet topped by two mortices for the attachment of a separately-made and now-missing attribute, either a crest or an owl. Her long, center-parted, wavy hair spills out below the helmet and is loosely gathered at the back of her neck.
The Mougins Athena is an eclectic creation of a talented Roman sculptor who creatively combined aspects of several different earlier Greek types, resulting in a unique depiction of the goddess of war and wisdom. Among the many surviving images of Athena (Minerva to the Romans), there are no known examples that have the aegis rendered in the manner presented here. The Athena Lemnia, a bronze figure by the sculptor Pheidias described by the 2nd century A.D. geographer Pausanias, has been tentatively identified in Roman marble copies, including the example in Dresden (see no. 141 in F. Canciani, “Athena/Minerva,” in LIMC). The Lemnia wears the aegis on the diagonal over the right shoulder rather than the left, but she is depicted without her helmet and shield. When she is shown wearing a Corinthian helmet, it is usually placed high on her head, as here, and as with the Athena Velletri type (see no. 247 in P. Demargne, “Athena,” in LIMC). She occasionally holds a shield in her left hand, as in the Giustiniani type (see no. 87 in S. Settis and C. Gasparri, The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces).
The Mougins Athena is an eclectic creation of a talented Roman sculptor who creatively combined aspects of several different earlier Greek types, resulting in a unique depiction of the goddess of war and wisdom. Among the many surviving images of Athena (Minerva to the Romans), there are no known examples that have the aegis rendered in the manner presented here. The Athena Lemnia, a bronze figure by the sculptor Pheidias described by the 2nd century A.D. geographer Pausanias, has been tentatively identified in Roman marble copies, including the example in Dresden (see no. 141 in F. Canciani, “Athena/Minerva,” in LIMC). The Lemnia wears the aegis on the diagonal over the right shoulder rather than the left, but she is depicted without her helmet and shield. When she is shown wearing a Corinthian helmet, it is usually placed high on her head, as here, and as with the Athena Velletri type (see no. 247 in P. Demargne, “Athena,” in LIMC). She occasionally holds a shield in her left hand, as in the Giustiniani type (see no. 87 in S. Settis and C. Gasparri, The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces).