transtemporal puzzle game for artists
Uknown
Torso of a marble statue of a naked woman, probably the goddess Aphrodite or Venus. The figure appears to have stood with the weight on the right leg and most of the left thigh is restored. The sculpture was influenced by the so-called Knidia type of Aphrodite (top image), the work of the sculptor Praxiteles, but its exact type is uncertain... -British Museum
voyeuristic kitsch
Hiram Powers (1805 - 1873)
The Greek Slave, model 1841-43, carved 1846, Serravezza marble, 167.5 × 51.4 × 47 cm (National Gallery of Art)
Hugh Owen, ‘Greek Slave, (Marble), Powers’, 1851, salted paper print from paper negative, also unpaginated plate in Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Attributed to Southworth and Hawes, ‘The Greek Slave (back) by Hiram Powers’, 1848, daguerreotype. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
-Di Bello. Photographs of Sculpture: Greek Slave’s ‘complex polyphony’, 1847–77. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 2016.
The popularity of this work—a popularity that likely exceeded the work’s aesthetic merits—catapulted Powers to international fame
- Dr. Bryan Zygmont, Khan Academy of Arts and humanities
Praxiteles (Pliny's date: 364 BC Attica)
Aphrodite of Cnidos, torso: Roman copy, 2nd century C.E., 17th century restoration (since a torso, its members are prosthetic, therefore an ambiguous copy), marble (Rome, Roman National Museum, Palazzo Altemps)
Venus de’ Medici, 1st-century BCE, marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture in the immediate Praxitelean tradition. The Greek inscription CLEOMENES SON OF APOLLODORUS not only is not original, but in the 18th century the name "Cleomenes" was forged on sculptures of modest quality (indeed) to enhance their value. Besides Praxiteles, less-likely attributions are Phidias or Scopas. Unsuccessful Arms restoration by Ercole Ferrata (1610 – 1686) a Roman Baroque artist who gave her long tapering Mannerist fingers. (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) -image The Met’s copy
The Colonna Venus with its thin draperies, as it was displayed until 1932. Roman marble copy of the lost Aphrodite of Cnidus by Praxiteles. Perhaps the most faithful Roman copy of Praxiteles' original. Current loc. Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican Museums. -last p
