Rare painted statues are rare in Roman times

The marble head of an Amazon warrior woman appeared on a volcanic rock of Vesuvius with the same makeup still in place.

Amazon warrior female eyes. Buried in a massive 2,000-year-old eruption that once covered Pompeii and the nearby towns of Herculaneum and Stabiae, a half-human painted statue was found in a cliff near the Basilica temple in Herculaneum.

The newly found head belongs to a group of decorative sculptures for the Basilica. Seventeen years before the volcanic eruption, Basilica was almost completely destroyed and was rebuilt by Governor Marcus Nonius Balbus.

The work was excavated in the 18th century, when the whole town of Herculaneum was accidentally discovered when people built a well. The statues were restored and lost color.

With colored hair and face, the Amazon woman is one of the few surviving proofs of the painted Roman statues. The nose and mouth were lost, but the hair, the pupils, and the eyelashes all remained orange-red.

This temple complex is related to the Hercules legend. "Perhaps the statue symbolizing Hercules's 9th challenge is to get Hippolyte's queen's belt from Amazon," said Jane Thompson, director of Herculaneum conservation project.

MT