CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE VENUS
CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.
The goddess standing on an integral plinth with her weight on her right leg, the left bent at the knee with her foot pulled back and angled out, her sandaled feet emerging from below the hem of her mantle, wrapped low around her waist, enveloping her legs and exposing her sensuous upper torso, her left arm lowered with her hand holding the central knot of her mantle from which descends a gathering of zigzag folds, her right arm originally lowered and projecting forward, her hand perhaps once holding a mirror, a tendril a wavy hair falling onto her left shoulder, with a support in the form of Eros riding a dolphin
53½ in. (135.9 cm.) high

Provenance

with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, 1983 (Art of the Ancient World, vol. III, no. 51).
John Kluge Collection.

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G. Max Bernheimer

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Lot Essay

This splendid figure of Venus is a Roman variant derivative of several earlier Greek prototypes. The placement of the lowered left hand recalls the gesture of the Aphrodite Pudica, and the treatment of the drapery is like that of the Anadyomene. It is not clear if there was a single model that served as the inspiration, but the fact that there are several copies of the same basic type, in marble, bronze and terracotta, suggests that there may have been one. For the type see nos. 688-695 in Delivorrias, "Aphrodite," in LIMC.

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