Many Roman statues lack heads due to the natural weakness of the neck, having been destroyed through ancient rituals or for modern profit.
When exhibiting a work of art, museums typically strive to display the complete piece. It is rare to see a painting missing half of its canvas or a tapestry that is only partially intact. However, with ancient Roman statues, missing parts are almost the norm. Statues often have broken noses, missing fingers, and notably, many are headless. While scholars often cannot determine exactly how a statue lost its head, clues have led them to several common causes.
Ancient Causes
Many Roman statues displayed in museums are headless. (Photo: Dea/A. Dagli Ort).
The first and simplest reason many statues are headless is that the neck is a natural weak point in the human body, according to Rachel Kousser, a professor of classics and art history at the City University of New York. When a statue falls during display or transportation, the neck is often the first part to break.
However, a broken head of a statue is not always an accident. Sometimes, the Romans deliberately destroyed them. During the process of damnatio memoriae, the Roman Senate could vote to erase the memory of a despised emperor after his death. If approved, the Senate would remove the emperor’s name from records, confiscate property, and destroy portraits and statues. According to Kousser, the infamous emperor Nero is a prime example, and many of his portraits have been damaged.
Additionally, Roman sculptors sometimes intentionally designed statues with removable heads. This design allowed them to use different materials for the body and face, enabling multiple sculptors to contribute to one statue or even replace the statue’s head in the future, according to Kenneth Lapatin, curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. These statues are easily recognizable because the body has a hole for the sculptor to insert the neck, and the statue’s head has a smoothly carved rim instead of a rough break.
The head of the statue “Woman in a Cloak” reattached to its body after being separated in the 20th century. (Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum).
Modern Causes
In some rare cases, heads of statues were removed in modern times, Lapatin notes. Roman statues hold significant value in the antiquities market, and unscrupulous art dealers realized that they could make more money by selling two items instead of one. Thus, they physically separated the heads from the bodies.
The statue “Woman in a Cloak” at the J. Paul Getty Museum is an example. When the museum acquired it in 1972, this 2.1-meter tall statue only had its body. However, archival images show that the statue still had its head at least until the 1930s. When a senior museum official discovered an antiquities dealer selling a head that appeared to belong to the statue, experts realized that someone had separated it in the 20th century.
“We are not clear on the details, but it seems the person doing this thought they could benefit more by selling the headless statue and then selling the head separately,” Lapatin said. Although the careless drilling at the neck made it challenging to reattach the head and body, conservators eventually succeeded, creating a rare “reunion” of the ancient statue with its head.
