2005.02

Bronze figurine of Aphrodite

Purchased. Ht 15.4cm

The right lower leg and foot are missing; there is slight corrosion to the tips of the diadem; otherwise in good condition, with a light green patina.

The goddess has her weight on her left leg, the right relaxed and bent forward at the knee. Her head is turned slightly to her right, and she holds tresses of hair above her shoulders. She is naked apart from a prominent diadem on her head; her hair has a central parting, coming down in waves about the face; the hair at the top and back of the head is done more tightly and more summarily; it is collected into a small double bun at the back of the neck.

The front of the diadem has an engraved design of tendrils on the lower front part and of veins on the leaves above.

With its emphasis on the diadem and hair, the head is rather large and the lower legs somewhat heavy.

Perhaps Antonine, mid- to later second century AD.

There is a good overview of representations of Aphrodite in sculpture by R. Fleischer in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae ii (Zurich-Munich 1984) sv Aphrodite. For the Anadyomene, showing the goddess holding her hair after rising from the water, see p. 54, item 4, and pp. 76-78 (half-clothed). The naked version seems to have been more popular among small bronzes. The idea seems to have had its inspiration from the famous late-fourth century painting by Apelles in Kos which apparently showed the goddess rising from the water. The sculptural versions may be Early Hellenistic in origin and show the goddess either nude or with her drapery knotted around her hips. The series shows the pervading influence of the Praxitelean Aphrodites in the treatment of the female body, but, as N. Himmelmann has pointed out, after Furtwängler, (“Eine römische Bronze in Oxford”, Marburger W-Pr 1958 [= Minima Archaeologica. Utopie und Wirklichkeit der Antike (Mainz 1996) 165-173]), the pose also owes something to the tradition of the Polykleitan Diadoumenos.

There is a clutch of epigrams on Apelles’ painting preserved in the Planudean Anthology: 178 (= Gow–Page, Hellenistic Epigrams 26, no. XLV, Antipater of Sidon); 179 (Archias); 180 (Democritus); 181 (Julianos Aegypt.); 182 (= Gow–Page 114-5 no. XXIII, Leonidas of Tarentum). They variously describe her as coming out of the sea that bore her, squeezing the sea-foam from her hair, and they then make comments on her body, her nakedness and the look in her eyes. None of the poets need actually have seen the painting. (In this respect it is interesting that Herodas IV, 59ff, where the women are purported to be looking at works of Apelles in the Koan Asklepieion, does not mention it – as Gow already observed – but see now G. Zanker, “Poetry and Art in Herodas, Mimiamb 4”, in: M.A. Harder et al. [eds], Beyond the Canon, Hellenistica Groningana 11 [Groningen 2006] 357-77, and esp. 320 n.36 and 328.) See further J. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen (Leipzig 1868, repr. Hildesheim 1959) 349-351 nos 1847-1863, and then the comments of O. Benndorf in his article “Bemerkungen zur griechischen Kunstgeschichte”, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 1, 1876, esp. 50-66.

W. Neumer-Pfau, Studien zur Ikonographie und der Funktion hellenistischer Aphrodite-Statuen (Bonn 1982) 201-213 gives a good basic description of the type together with listings of statuettes and broader discussion. D.M. Brinkerhoff, Hellenistic Statues of Aphrodite. Studies in the History of their Stylistic Development (Diss. Harvard 1958, New York and London 1978) 56-69 makes useful observations. There is also discussion, particularly of issues of sequence and chronology, by C.M. Mitchell, The Aphrodite of Knidos and her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art (Ann Arbor 1995) 86-93, with figs. 28-31, and by B.S. Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture, III. The Styles of ca. 100-31 B.C. (Madison, Wisconsin, 2002).

Small-scale reproductions of the figure were hugely popular in the Late Hellenistic period and the first two centuries of the Empire. As one might expect, they exhibit a great range in quality. H. Riemann gave a list of replicas then available in Kerameikos II. Die Skulpturen vom 5. Jahrhundert bis in römische Zeit (Berlin 1940) 115-117, under cat. no. 170; see also M. Bieber, Ancient Copies. Contributions to the History of Greek and Roman Art (New York 1977) pll. 39-40, figs. 220-226. P.G. Warden, The Hilprecht Collection of Greek, Italic, and Roman Bronzes in the University Museum (Philadelphia 1997) 36 also gives a number of versions. There is also broad-ranging discussion in J.W. Salomonson, “Furtwänglers Anadyomene. Bekanntes und Unbekanntes zu einer Marmorstatuette aus ehemaligem Münchener Privatbesitz”, Bulletin antieke beschaving. Annual Papers on Classical Archaeology 70, 1995, 1-53. On the phenomenon as a whole, see especially E. Bartman, Ancient Sculptural Copies in Miniature (Leiden 1992).

For our figurine, compare the bronze published in J. Dörig (ed.), Art antique. Collections privées de Suisse romande (Mainz 1975) no. 373 (ill.) datable to first or second century AD. It is smaller than ours, having a total ht (incl. plinth) of 12cm, but has finer treatment of the head and hair. It too has a diadem. One could imagine that it comes earlier in the same series as ours. For a later version, also with diadem, see a marble statuette in the Louvre (ht 75cm), from a villa at Libourne near Bordeaux (e.g. J. Boardman [ed.], The Oxford History of Classical Art [Oxford 1993] 319-320 no. 318.) It is probably to be dated to the early fourth century AD. While the essentials of the pose are the same, including the positioning of the legs, it reveals its Late Antique character in its purer frontality, its different proportions and its simplification of the handling of the body.

Also see E. Babelon and J-A. Blanchet, Catalogue des bronzes antiques de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris 1895) nos 234-240, and D.K. Hill, Catalogue of Classical Bronze Sculpture in the Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore 1949) no. 204, pl. 44, purchased in Egypt and thought to be Egyptian. The last is quite a good parallel for ours as well as being of much the same size. Contrast other items on her pll. 40-43.

One of the latest versions known to me is the pendant of a necklace on which the figure is done in gold against lapis lazuli (in the form of a shell) and pearls; it is dated to the late sixth or early seventh century: Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection, 28.6, K. Weitzmann (ed.), Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (Exhib. Cat., New York 1979) 313-314 no. 288, pl. IX. A version that shows the motif translated into a very different style is to be found on a Coptic sculpted relief of the fifth or 6th century AD where she is depicted starkly frontal. With enormous hair, again against a shell, supported on one side by what might be taken as a Nereid and on the other by a male counterpart, both of them on a much larger scale: Paris, Louvre, Egyptian Antiquities E 14280, Egyptes…L’Egyptien et le copte (Exhib. Cat. Musée Henri Prades de Lattes, Lattes, 1999) 302 no. 129.

Note also the mosaic version in Limassol, found, appropriately enough, in a room of the Roman baths at Alassa, D. Michaelides, Cypriot Mosaics (Nicosia 1987) no. 51, pl. 32. It dates to the fifth century AD.

While we normally think of Aphrodite in terms similar to those represented here, a glance at the range of articles in A.C. Smith and S. Pickup (eds), Brill’s Companion to Aphrodite (Leiden 2010) will show that her mythological construction was much more complex.

Charles Ede Ltd (London), Ancient Bronzes (2001) no. 9 (colour ill.); id., Cypriot and Roman Antiquities (2005) no. 20 (colour ill.).