Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
36
Statuette of Aphrodite Adjusting Her Sandal
The head and top of the neck, right arm from the middle of the upper arm, right leg from the middle of the thigh, left leg from below the knee are broken away. The left arm was made separately and attached with a dowel near the shoulder. There are other minor damages and incrustation.
There are many statuettes in marble, bronze, and terracotta of the popular theme of Aphrodite tying on or adjusting her sandal. The original may have been created in western Asia Minor by one Polycharmos, but Alexandria in Egypt became a center for such productions in late Hellenistic and Roman times (Brinkerhoff, 1978, chapter iv, pp. 70-97). A number of statuettes of Aphrodite adjusting her sandal have marine attributes or have been associated with shrines where sailors made dedications, hence the name Aphrodite Euploia (Huskinson, 1975, pp. 1-2, no. 2. pl. 1).
Such decorative statuettes, when complete, could also have erotic overtones, as the example in Berlin from Aigion, where the goddess leans on a terminal figure of the ithyphallic Priapos (Conze, 1891, p. 13, no. 23). These small statues and statuettes also vary in anatomical proportions, the Harvard Aphrodite being plump, while an example just over twice as large emphasizes the slenderness of the figure (Galerie Koller A. G., 1979, pp. 238-239, no. 632). The statue found at Antioch-on-the-Orontes and now in the Baltimore Museum of Art also follows the slenderer, more elongated system of proportions (Brinkerhoff, 1970, p. 38, fig. 53). Statuettes like the Winthrop-Harvard example and that in Baltimore from Antioch have been found in various states of completion on Delos (Marcdade, 1969, p. 509, pl. XLVII).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer