Niobe was a daughter of Tantalus and Dione in Greek mythology. She was the first mortal lover of Zeus, the father of the gods. This marble copy based on the Roman model in the Uffizi in Florence was originally in the Haus zur Sandgrube in Basel. It formed the counterpart to the head of Apollo Belvedere on the opposite side. The two early classicist marble copies were long thought to be the work of the sculptor Alexander Trippel (1744-1793), who had apparently only conveyed them from Rome to Basel.