Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
65
Fragment of the Base and the Area Below the Knees of a Statuette, Aphrodite(?)
The statuette is cut off at the knees; only the lower legs and feet remain on a circular plinth. The surfaces are chipped and abraded.
From the heaviness of the drapery behind and its elegance in front, this could be a version of the fifth century B.C. standing Aphrodite wrongly called the Venus Genetrix from her appearance and so labeled on Roman coins. The feet are bare, suggesting a goddess, and the folds of drapery falling vertically in front could suggest Isiac dress above. The cloak is not fringed, however, and an Alexadrine Venus Genetrix slightly influenced by Isiac types seems a better identification.
Just such a complete statuette in marble, minus the attribute in the left hand (which, if a jug, could make the figure a fountain nymph), was in the London art market a decade ago (Sotheby Sale, 10 July, 1972, London, no. 186, pl. XLIX). Another, slightly more refined but missing the lower limbs, feet, and plinth, was also in London (Sotheby Sale, 4 May, 1970, London, p. 60, no. 166, plate opposite). Sometimes the drapery around the lower limbs of these small statues is very transparent, leaving the heavy bunch only where it falls down between the legs and spreads out onto the plinth. Such is the case with the diademed Aphrodite with Eros on the plinth at her left side found near Manavgat and with the sculptures in the museum at Side. It appears to have been carved with portrait features, as late as the year A.D. 300 (Inan, 1975, pp. 41-43, no. 8, pl. XX).
The very elegant drapery of the Aphrodite of the Fréjus type (a copy of about A.D. 100) in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (no. 23.351), show how the drapery of this fragment was reduced and greatly simplified from the general prototype created in Athens around 420 B.C. and its many late Hellenistic and Roman imperial adaptations (Ridgway, 1972, pp. 40-42, no. 14, illus. pp. 159-160, fig. 3, p. 161).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
