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Gallery Text

Born of sea foam, Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, is also closely connected to navigation and seafaring. This torso is one of about twenty extant copies of a statue type currently known as Aphrodite Pontia-Euploia (Guardian of Sea Voyages), although it is not certain that the type was originally connected to the sea. Of Greek goddesses, only nymphs or Aphrodite are typically shown either partially or fully nude. This type is distinguished by the placement of the mantle, which emphasizes the sensuous S-curve of her body and hips; the garment would also have covered the now-lost head. The stance was characteristic of the work of the fourth-century BCE sculptor Praxiteles, who created the Knidian Aphrodite, the first full-scale female nude statue. The size of this torso suggests that the statue might have decorated a civic water fountain.

Auguste Rodin, sculptor of the Walking Man statue in this colonnade, owned and displayed a torso of this Aphrodite type.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1900.17
Title
Torso of Aphrodite
Other Titles
Former Title: Statue of a Divine Female Personage, Aphrodite or a Nymph, after Greek original of c. 350 BC
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
sculpture
Date
1st century BCE-mid 1st century CE
Places
Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Asia, Smyrna (Ionia)?
Period
Hellenistic period, Late, to Early Roman Imperial
Culture
Greek
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/292450

Location

Location
Level 3, Room 3200, Ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Art, Classical Sculpture
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Thasian marble
Technique
Carved
Dimensions
97.8 x 37 x 28 cm (38 1/2 x 14 9/16 x 11 in.)
520 lb.

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Barone Barracco collection, Rome, (by 1900).

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Members of the Class of 1895
Accession Year
1900
Object Number
1900.17
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
34

Small Statue of a Divine Female Personage, Aphrodite or a Nymph

Most of both arms, and he head and feet, are missing. The left breast is damaged, and there are chips on the drapery.

This small statue, existing in about twenty replicas, represented Aphrodite Pontia or Euploia and was used in Graeco-Roman times as a fountain figure, the water sometimes emerging from the dolphin serving as support at the left side. The original is thought to go back to the time of Praxiteles, about 350 BC, and may have stood in a temple by the sea, a smaller version (since the figure is only two-thirds lifesize) of the Aphrodite of Knidos. There are also, however, strong arguments in the diademed, draped head, the elongated body, and the hipshot pose for suggesting the original of these copies was created in the Hellenistic world, perhaps on the island of Rhodes, about 150 BC. Near mirror reversals of the type were created in late Hellenistic times and also copied.

She appears to have been represented as unveiling herself. She stands with the weight on her right leg, her hip thrown outward to give the body a strong S-curve. Her cloak starts behind the neck, falls down her back, and is bunched in folds on a line around the right hip to the front of the torso, falling again over the left thigh. The other end is tucked under the left arm, making a diagonal fold across the back. This Aphrodite was wearing a diadem above her hair and, often, the part of her cloak that passed up behind her shoulders as a veil over the back of her head. Her left arm, with a bracelet on the upper part, was lowered and extended, probably once holding a marine attribute such as a stylized wave. Her right arm was bent and appears to have touched and held up the heavy folds of drapery on an extended right hip. The presence of the diadem favors the identification as a goddess born from the sea rather than a nymph of the ocean or water.

The original statue was perhaps a bronze, but, like the Aphrodite of Knidos, it could have been a marble. The copy in the Galleria of the Museo Capitolino, slightly larger than most, has been transformed into a statue of a Roman lady of Domitian's time (AD 81-96) wearing her high, exaggerated hairstyle and sandals on the feet. This amusing distortion of the ultimate original may have served as a funerary statue, having been found outside the Porta San Sebastiano in an area where funerary monuments could take on what we would consider surprising pagan forms (Jones, 1912, pp. 127-128, no. 34, pl. 25). A statue in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, in about the same state of preservation as the Harvard statue, of uncertain provenance (perhaps Roman Hispania), demonstrates the widespread export of the type (considering Smyrna as the source of the statue acquired by Edward Forbes for Harvard University) (Blanco, 1957, pp. 71-72, no. 95-e, pl. xxxviii). A statue similar to the Forbes example was photographed in Zurich in a private collection, in 1962. The draped and diademed head is preserved. The provenance was said to have been the environs of Rome.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

  • Paul Arndt and Walther Amelung, Photographische Einzelaufnahmen antiker Sculpturen (Munich, Germany, 1893 - 1950), no. 1542, no. 14 in list of replicas
  • Salomon Reinach, Repertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, vols. 1-6, E. Leroux (Paris, France, 1897 - 1930), IV, p. 203, nos. 3, 7
  • Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston VII, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA, 1909), p. 30, pl. 31
  • George H. Chase, Greek and Roman Sculpture in American Collections, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1924), pp. 119 f., 145, fig. 143
  • Guido Achille Mansuelli, "La Statua Piacentina di Cleomene Ateniese", Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts, Walter de Gruyter and Co. (Berlin, Germany, 1941), Band 56, p. 156, figs. 10, 11 on p. 159
  • George M. A. Hanfmann, Greek Art and Life, An Exhibition Catalogue, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1950), no. 186.
  • Margarete Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, Columbia University Press (New York, NY, 1961), p. 133
  • George M. A. Hanfmann and David Gordon Mitten, "The Art of Classical Antiquity", Apollo (May 1978), vol. 107, no. 195, pp. 362-369, p. 364, note 11
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III and Amy Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 50, no. 34.
  • Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Artemis (Zürich, Switzerland, 1999), Vol. 2, Aphrodite 602.
  • [Reproduction Only], Persephone, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 2011, [Cover illustration].

Exhibition History

  • Greek Art and Life: From the Collections of the Fogg Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Private Lenders, Fogg Art Museum, 03/07/1950 - 04/15/1950
  • Ancient to Modern, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 01/31/2012 - 06/01/2013
  • 32Q: 3200 West Arcade, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu