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The antique Roman statue was found in 1627 in Campo Marzio in Rome and sculpted by Alessandro Algardi for Cardinal Ludovisi as Athena. The hands and lower part of the body and trunk are being restored.
Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, a prominent collector and nephew of the deceased Pope Gregory XV offered Algardi employment as a restorer of antique sculpture. This relatively modest employment as a restorer, proof that he must already have worked as a sculptor in marble before going to Rome, was to be Algardi's main activity for the next ten years. His earliest known restoration is a reworking for Ludovisi in 1626 of an antique torso into a statue of Prometheus the Torchbearer, a work followed by the statues known as the Athena Ludovisi and, in 1631, the Hermes Logios (all in Palazzo Altemps, Rome).
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