A miniature Roman reproduction of the famous statue that Phidias made for the Parthenon in Athens between 447 and 438 B.C. The original was about eleven meters in height and was of gold and ivory. The finest copies, of which the present is an outstanding example, are small works with certain differences in proportion and details.

Here, the cleanness and depth of the vertical folds are notable and in keeping with the rather long-faced canon typical of Athenian art from that period. The helmet crest is the result of a seventeenth-century restoration.