Minerva holding an owl
Italy, 2nd century CE. Made of white marble, sardonyx and porphyry.
This statue was bought from an Italian family in 1777 by Pierre-Marie-Gaspard Grimod, comte d’Orsay, a wealthy socialite who collected a huge stash of sculptures and paintings, and kept in his private residence in Paris. He moved to Germany in 1787 but left some of his stuff behind; after the Revolution, his property in France was seized by the state and his art collection donated to the Louvre.
