The statue is preserved up to about the knees. The right wrist and part of the left arm are missing. Most of the nose and mouth, as well as a small part of the forehead, are also broken. Chipping is evident sporadically on the surface of the marble. The head is put back together from two separate fragments. The statue depicts a standing, frontal young female (as evidenced by the “melon” hairstyle and the flat chest) supported by the right leg; the left is slightly bent. The right arm is bent at the elbow, holding the himation in front of the chest, while the left, lowered and slightly bent, is brought forward. She wears a sleeved chiton and a himation. From the chiton only the right sleeve can be seen, buttoned along the right shoulder. The himation wraps tightly around the body, covering the left shoulder and arm. More specifically, one end of the himation is wrapped around the left arm and falls on the left shoulder. The garment then continues diagonally to the back and comes to the front, covering the lower part of the body and forming a rectangular gathering of folds held, as already mentioned, by the right hand in front of the chest. Its other end falls freely above the left arm. The face is smooth, with idealized features. She wears a “melon” hairstyle ending in a braid that is wrapped three times at the back of the head in order to create an “open nest” type bun, characteristic of the Trajanic period (cf. the statue of Antonia Cleodike from the Heraion of Olympia {Γ104}). Inside the bun, the texture of the locks of hair on the surface of the skull is indicated by an incised pattern reminiscent of a spider's web. The open bun (without, however, the internal “spider’s web” motif) is almost identical to the bun on the head Athens National Archaeological Museum inv. 4912 (of unknown provenance; A. Datsouli-Stavridi, “Πορτραίτα του Εθνικού Αρχαιολογικού Μουσείου”, ArchEph 1983, 202, pl. 67, period of Trajan). Despite the classicistic hairstyle, the absence of any symbol of education, such as the papyrus scroll or the scrinium, turns us away from the identification of the statue as the poetess Corinna, as has been suggested from time to time.
J. Marcadé, E. Raftopoulou, “Sculptures argiennes”, BCH 81 (1957), 429-432, no. 8, fig. 15-16, pl. VII (Corinna); E. Schmidt, Römische Frauenstatuen, 1967, 101; I. Linfert-Reich, Musen- und Dichterinnenfiguren des vierten und frühen dritten Jahrhunderts, Köln 1971, 58; H. Kruse, Römische weibliche Gewandstatuen des zweiten jahrhunderts n.Chr., Göttingen 1975, 347, cat. no. D 39 (late principate of Trajan – early principate of Hadrian); J. Marcadé, “Sculptures argiennes III”, in Études argiennes, BCH Suppl. 6 (1980), 144, cat. no. 8, fig. 10; H. Manderscheid, Die Skulpturenausstattung der kaiserzeitlichen Thermenanlagen, Berlin 1981, 85, no. 148, pl. 25 (Corinna?); K. Fittshen, P. Zanker, Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom III, Mainz am Rhein 1983, note 1 in cat. no. 101 (Hadrianic); https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/1061075?fl=20&q=%22Argos,%20Griechenland%22&resultIndex=18
