Statue

I’m not sure who this is meant to be, it’s a photo I took three years ago at Trentham Gardens in Stoke-on-Trent. The woman is carrying a snake.

I looked up various ‘women holding a snake’ entries on the Internet. Some had two snakes, some were about Asian goddesses. But this is a single snake, classically represented. I don’t know if it’s Greek or Roman but I think I remember the statue being linked with medicine so I plumped for a roman version from Wikipedia.

Angitia

The Romans derived her name from anguis, “serpent,” hence the form Anguitia. As snakes were often associated with the healing arts in antiquity (see, for instance, rod of Asclepius), Angitia is believed to have been mainly a goddess of thaumaturgy.