CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

This splendid life-sized version of the goddess of love is depicted nude but for a mantle draped around her right leg, held in place by the compression of her thighs. Her right arm would originally have been lowered with her hand placed over her pudenda, the pose recalling that of the fully nude Knidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles from the 4th century B.C. The left arm was perhaps bent forward, holding a mirror. The slender, somewhat elongated proportions of her body reflect the tendencies of the later Hellenistic Period, as seen on the Aphrodite from Melos by Alexandros of Antioch of circa late 2nd-early 1st century B.C. The type presented here is known from only one other example now in the British Museum, discovered at Ostia by Gavin Hamilton (see no. 729 in A. Delivorrias, “Aphrodite,” in LIMC, vol. II).