The interior of the small bowl is decorated with a delicately carved bust of a draped female figure wearing a Hellenistic rolled diadem on her head, and clothed in a garment leaving her right breast uncovered. The folds of cloth are indicated by wavy parallel ridges. Two tightly curled locks of hair on either side of the face hang down in heavy tresses to the shoulders. Hair on the top of her head is parted in the middle and held in place by the diadem. Her face is full and has parted lips and heavily outlined almond-shaped eyes. In spite of the figure’s small size, anatomical details such as the clavicle bones and musculature of her neck are well indicated, as is her voluptuous rounded breast. The rim portion of the bowl below the figure has been restored. The remains of decoration, perhaps pointed flower petals or leaves at the end of a floral swag, extend out from the restored area that is left plain.

As preserved, the rim of the bowl bears a Greek inscription in two lines arching above the figure. The words of the first line are separated by an incised circle andflanked at the left and right by two similarly incised circles; a punch mark separates the words of the second line, and occurs again at the end of the line:

ΚΛΕΟΜΕΝHΣ ΑΠΟΛΛΟΔΩΡΟΥ
ΑΘΗΝΑIΟΣ ΕΠΩΕΣΕΝ

The inscription translates: “Kleomenes (son) of Apollodoros the Athenian made (it).”The shapes and forms of the letters are consistent with a late Hellenistic or early Roman date (e.g.many of the letters have serifs and the letter “alpha,” having a broken crossbar, is distinctively later). “Kleomenes” is a name belonging to kings of Sparta in the fifth, fourth and third centuries B.C. (Kleomenes I,490-480 B.C.; Kleomenes II, 370-309 B.C.; Kleomenes III, 236-222 B.C.), but in this context the appellation refers to the Hellenistic sculptor, Kleomenes, known to be the son of the Athenian sculptor Apollodoros. “Kleomenes, son of Apollodoros the Athenian,” appears on the famous sculpture of the Medici Venus, although the inscription is thought to be a later transcription of the ancient signature. A “Kleomenes Athenaios” signed a sculpture of Aphrodite in Piacenza and an ancient round altar in Florence (Uffizi inv. 612), the signature of which is considered to be genuine [see B. S. Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture III: The Styles of ca. 100 – 31 B.C. (Madison 2002), p. 273, n. 5]. In his Natural History (N.H. 36.33), Pliny mentions that the sculptor Kleomenes may have also made a sculpture of the Thespiades, the fifty daughters of Thespius with whom Herakles sired fifty sons in one night. Rather than referring to the bowl itself as being made by the sculptor, the inscription on the bowl almost certainly refers to a sculpture made by Kleomenes – most likely the one depicted beneath the inscription. Few known sculptures attributed to this artist resemble the image of the draped woman, and she mayrepresent an unknown, now lost work by the sculptor.

All e-Tiquities have been searched in the Art Loss Register database.