NO RESERVE: A MARBLE TORSO OF APHRODITE

拍品描述

A MARBLE TORSO OF APHRODITE, ROMAN, CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D. OR LATER Carved in the round from a fine white marble, the figure preserved from the base of the neck to the upper thighs, the weight shifted onto the right leg in a pronounced contrapposto that throws the left hip forward and articulates the soft sway of the torso. The upper body is nude, the breasts high and rounded, the abdomen modelled with restraint across a shallow median line and a lightly indicated navel. A heavy mantle is gathered low across the hips, knotted or rolled at the front and falling in deep vertical folds over the left thigh and behind the right, where the fabric bunches against the standing leg and cascades to the break. Over the proper right shoulder a further length of drapery falls behind the arm, terminating in a mass of parallel folds against which the upper arm was originally supported. Both arms are lost above the biceps; the head and neck, together with the legs below the drapery, are missing. The surface retains a warm, evenly weathered patina, with earthen deposits in the recesses of the drapery and two circular dowel-plugs visible at the right shoulder and upper chest, most likely relating to ancient repair or to the attachment of a separately worked element. The figure follows the long-established Greek type of the half-draped Aphrodite, in which the goddess is shown at the moment of bathing or dressing, the mantle slipping from the upper body to gather at the hips. The pose descends ultimately from the fourth-century B.C. innovations associated with Praxiteles and his followers, whose Knidian Aphrodite established the female nude as a legitimate subject for cult sculpture, and was subsequently developed through Hellenistic variants such as the Aphrodite of Arles, the Capitoline and Medici types, and the Venus Genetrix. The particular treatment here, with the mantle low on the hips and the torso fully exposed above, places the figure within the broad family of "Pudica" and hip-mantle variants that circulated widely in Roman copies from the late Republic through the second century A.D. Aphrodite, identified by the Romans with Venus, held a position in Roman religion that extended well beyond her Greek role as goddess of desire. As Venus Genetrix she was claimed as the divine ancestress of the Julian gens and, by extension, of the imperial house; as Venus Victrix she was invoked in military contexts; as Venus Felix she presided over fortune and civic prosperity. Statues of the type were accordingly produced in considerable numbers for public baths, gardens, nymphaea, and domestic settings, where they functioned simultaneously as devotional images, as declarations of cultural affiliation with the Greek sculptural canon, and as ornaments of learned taste. The choice of a fine white marble for such figures is not incidental. Marble in the Roman sculptural economy carried associations with permanence and with the prestige of Greek precedent, and the finer imported stones from Parian, Pentelic, and the Asia Minor quarries were reserved for the more ambitious commissions. The present torso exemplifies the Roman practice of reproducing and adapting Greek Aphrodite types at close to life-size for private and semi-public settings. The confident modelling of the flesh, the naturalistic softness of the abdomen, and the deeply undercut drapery place the work within the mainstream of Imperial-period production, where the goddess's image served both as an object of devotion and as a statement of the patron's participation in the Hellenic sculptural tradition. Dimensions: Height on Stand: 85cm

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