Portrait of an elderly woman with headscarf, Roman. Priestess?
Pictures and information from:
Roman Women’s Dress. Literary Sources, Terminology, and Historical Development
Jan Radicke, with contributions by: Joachim Raeder
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110711554
Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek inv. 2059: Johansen (n. 76), 246 no. 111.
“M. Lindner misidentifies the head as a Vestal (Portraits of the Vestal Virgins, Priestesses of Ancient Rome, Ann Arbor 2015, 128–130 cat. 1 fig. 24, 25).”
“A few sculptures from the late Republican and early Imperial Periods show a headscarf that is worn by older women and is tightly bound over the forehead. The fabric envelops the entire hair on the dome and back of the head in a sack-like manner. The cloth of the headscarf either forms large loops on the sides or falls down to the neck with a straight end. […]
This headscarf is rightly called mitra, in accordance with the literary sources. Due to the typological kinship with the Hellenistic mitra, the headscarf we find in sculptures of Roman women can be possibly identified with the mitra calvatica.”
