CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN BRONZE FIGURE OF APHRODITE, OF KNIDOS TYPE
CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.
The naked goddess standing with weight on right leg, left leg bent at the knee, head turned to the left wearing high crescentic diadem, wavy hair parted in the middle and drawn back into a chignon, wearing armlets and holding her drapery in her left hand, and falling over a hydria, standing on an unrelated but ancient stepped square pedestal supported by four lion-paw feet, the steps inset before her
8¼ in. (21 cm.) high

Provenance

Collection of Julien Greau (1810-1895).
Formerly in the De Clercq collection (1836-1901), Paris, acquired in 1895.

Literature

W. Froehner, Collection Julien Greau. Catalogue des bronzes antiques et des objects d'art du moyen äge et de la Renaissance, Paris, 1885, pl. XXVI, no. 927.
W. Klein, Praxiteles, Leipzig, 1898, p. 253.
A. de Ridder, Collection de Clercq, les Bronzes, Paris, 1904, pp. 27-28, no. 5.
S. Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, Paris, 1908, p. 356, no. 5.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The renowned 4th Century B.C. Greek sculptor, Praxiteles, inspired later generations to produce variations of the most famous statue in classical antiquity, his Aphrodite of Knidos. With Praxiteles' characteristic soft and sensitive modelling, the Knidian Aphrodite was created as the absolute feminine ideal, both in bodily form and in pose.

The above Aphrodite was catalogue number 927 in the Greau collection. Number 925 is now in the British Museum, cf. H. B. Walters, Catalogue of the Bronzes, Greek, Roman and Etruscan, British Museum, London, 1899, p. 192, no. 1079.

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