This marble statue, reduced to a fragment of the head, represents the female personification of the Christian virtue of Hope and was sculpted by Tino di Camaino between 1320 and 1324. It was part of a sculptural group originally placed above the East Door of the Baptistery, depicting the three Christian Virtues known as the “Theological Virtues,” along with marble representations of the virtues of Faith and Charity/Love, also created by the same sculptor. Tino and his collaborators had made a sculptural group for each of the temple doors, but they were removed in the 16th century and replaced by those by Rustici, Sansovino, and Danti that you now admire in the Paradise Hall. This surviving fragment depicts a female head turned three-quarters to the left, with her gaze directed upward. Her hair is parted in the center, gathered, and adorned with a laurel wreath. It is precisely this crown, an ancient symbol of victory, that serves as an iconographic attribute of personifications of this virtue, often accompanied by a prayerful pose and an upward gaze. For the Christian faith, Hope is the virtue through which the believer maintains confidence in the reward of the heavenly kingdom and resurrection; “is the certain expectation/ of future glory” wrote Dante in the Divine Comedy (Paradise XXV, 67-68). In the Letter to the Romans (8:24-25), St. Paul states: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.”