CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

This chubby torso has the traces of two linear attachments high on the shoulder blades which would suggest winged Eros as an attribution of this child. A further similar area on his raised left knee would suggest something was resting on his braced leg. This, together with the angle of his arms and bent fingers, might suggest the complete figure might have been playing a lyre. For a bronze seated Eros playing the lyre in the Musée National du Bardo, Inv.-Nr. F 210 - with arms and hands in similar positions see Arachne no: 1079007. For two standing figures of large children see C. C. Mattusch, The Fire of Hephaistos, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 237-242, nos 25 and 26, for a child god or hero and a baby Dionysos. As Mattusch notes "child gods were a popular genre of classical statue. Often about the same size as real infants or young children, they represent Dionysos, Eros, Harpokrates, Herakles, and various other deities and heroes. Standing, sitting, sleeping, running, flying, or alighting, the youngest children are often easily identified by their clothing or attributes. Most evidently served as ornaments". She goes on to mention three mirror-imaging pairs of bronze statues of children all from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, four of which are erotes - see Le Collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, 1989, nos 182-184 (Arachne nos. 6919425 for an erote with jug).