HELLENISTIC PERIOD, CIRCA EARLY 2ND CENTURY B.C.

Details

A GREEK TERRACOTTA EROS
HELLENISTIC PERIOD, CIRCA EARLY 2ND CENTURY B.C.
Depicted as an effeminate youth, nude but for a chlamys over his left shoulder and thick-soled sandals, his fleshy body with plump breasts, his left leg advanced, holding an oinochoe in his upraised right hand, and a clam shell serving as a bowl in his lowered right, with a long neck embellished with creases, his head turned to his right, his oval face with fine features, the details of the eyes in black, his wavy hair bound in a kekryphalos, spiral tendrils falling along his neck, with a thick crown of ivy and berries, preserving extensive polychrome details, including red on the sandals, crown and lips and blue on some of the ivy, some ivy and the berries preserving traces of gilding, perforations at the shoulders for insertion of separately-made and now-missing wings
15 ½ in. (39.3 cm.) high

Provenance

with Freddie Küng, Luzern, 1972 (Schweizerische Kunst- und Antiquitäten-Messe, Basel, p. 18).

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Lot Essay

The large scale and style of this Hellenistic Eros suggest it was made in the workshops of Myrina. For a related figure of Eros now in Boston see no. 24 in J.P. Uhlenbrock, The Coroplast's Art, Greek Terracottas of the Hellenistic World. For a figure of Dionysos wearing a similar crown of ivy and berries see fig. 27, op. cit.

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