Hellenistic Freestanding Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, Part 1: Aphrodite

by Andrew Stewart

Hesperia, Volume 81, Issue 2
Page(s): 267-342
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2972/hesperia.81.2.0267
Year: 2012
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ABSTRACT:

This study, the first in a series of articles on freestanding Hellenistic sculpture from the Athenian Agora, publishes 20 certain, probable, and possible Hellenistic marble sculptures of Aphrodite, against the background of the genre’s evolution from ca. 450 B.C. through the Early Roman period. The statuettes among them probably were intended for domestic use, the others as dedications. An over-life-size example is identified as the cult statue of Aphrodite Hegemone of the Demos. The author explores the debt of these works to Classical Athenian originals and to neoclassical Athenian aesthetics, and argues that after the Sullan sack of 86 B.C., a preference for fully draped figures in this genre changed to one for seminude or nude statues and statuettes, often made for export.