Details
12 in. (30.5 cm.) high
Provenance
French private collection, acquired in the 1970s.
Special notice
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.
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Lot Essay

The fashion of the hairstyle finds close similarity to the Capitoline Venus, which is based on the 4th century B.C. prototype by Praxiteles. As the goddess of love and sexuality, Aphrodite was always portrayed as the essence of beauty. Her aesthetic perfection is reflected here in the goddess' idealized face and sensuously tactile hair, parted in the centre and framing the face in a succession of regular waves gathered at the nape of her neck and on top of the head in a so-called "Aphrodite bow". The present example can be compared to a head of the goddess that was originally set into a draped statue, now in the Glyptothek in Munich, dated to 300-290 B.C. (R. Wünsche, Glyptothek München: Meisterwerke Griechischer und Römischer Skulptur, p. 85).

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