Detail of the "Old Market Woman" in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2007

Statue of an old market woman
Early Imperial, Julio-Claudian, 1st century A.D.
Roman
Marble; H. 49 5/8 in. (125.98 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1909 (09.39)

The woman wears a thin elegant dress, thong sandals, and a crown of Dionysiac ivy leaves. She may be dressed for a festival and the birds and basket of fruit she carries might be offerings. Her garment has slipped off her shoulder, a detail often seen in representations of old women that hints at the liberation of the elderly from the restrictions imposed on women of childbearing years. As in many such figures, direct observation of reality lends force to deeper religious implications. The piece may be a copy of an older, Hellenistic model or a creation of the Roman period in a tradition that was still alive. It seems to have been deliberately damaged, probably in late antiquity, when such a pagan image would have provoked hostility.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/haht/hod_09.39.htm