This fragment probably comes from the statue of a standing figure resting the left arm on a Hekataion (a statuette or stele crowned by a head of Hekate Prothyraia –meaning Hekate ‘before the doorway’– which was often placed at the entrances of sanctuaries or houses). The head draws its origin from the type of the Caryatid, which was popular in Greek sculpture in the late 5th c. BC; the ample folds of the himation allude to the extravagant realism characteristic of sculpture in the early 4th c. BC. After the end of the 5th c. BC, sculptors gradually abandoned the Polykleitan pose of the upright, slender athletic torso and preferred to render figures in the form of a more supple youthful body which rested on a support and held a richly-draped himation. Characteristic examples of this trend are two slightly later works by Praxiteles, the Hermes and the Aphrodite of Cnidos, which were considered of unparalleled beauty by the ancient authors and were copied repeatedly in later periods. This type of representation was usually reserved for divine figures. This permits the hypothesis that the now lost statue from which this fragment derives represented a male or a female deity.