Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

relief figure seems calm by comparison. The Samothracian Nike’s

wings still beat, and the wind sweeps her drapery. Her himation

bunches in thick folds around her right leg, and her chiton is pulled

tightly across her abdomen and left leg.

The statue’s setting amplified its theatrical effect. The war galley

was displayed in the upper basin of a two-tiered fountain. In the

lower basin were large boulders. The fountain’s flowing water created

the illusion of rushing waves dashing up against the prow of the ship.

The statue’s reflection in the shimmering water below accentuated

the sense of lightness and movement. The sound of splashing water

added an aural dimension to the visual drama. Art and nature were

here combined in one of the most successful sculptures ever fash-

ioned. In the Nike of Samothrace and other works in the Hellenistic

baroque manner, sculptors resoundingly rejected the Polykleitan

conception of a statue as an ideally proportioned, self-contained

entity on a bare pedestal. The Hellenistic statues interact with their

environment and appear as living, breathing, and intensely emotive

human (or divine) presences.

VENUS DE MILOIn the Hellenistic period, sculptors regularly

followed Praxiteles’ lead in undressing Aphrodite, but they also openly

explored the eroticism of the nude female form. The famous Venus de

Milo (FIG. 5-83) is a larger-than-life-size marble statue of Aphrodite

found on Melos together with its inscribed base (now lost) signed by

the sculptor,Alexandros of Antioch-on-the-Meander.In this

statue, the goddess of love is more modestly draped than the

Aphrodite of Knidos (FIG. 5-62) but is more overtly sexual. Her left

hand (separately preserved) holds the apple Paris awarded her when

he judged her the most beautiful goddess of all. Her right hand may

have lightly grasped the edge of her drapery near the left hip in a half-

hearted attempt to keep it from slipping farther down her body. The

150 Chapter 5 ANCIENT GREECE

5-83Alexandros of Antioch-on-the-Meander,Aphrodite (Ve n u s

de Milo), from Melos, Greece, ca. 150–125 bce.Marble, 6 7 high.

Louvre, Paris.

Displaying the eroticism of many Hellenistic statues, this Aphrodite is

more overtly sexual than the Knidian Aphrodite (FIG. 5-62). The goddess

has a slipping garment to tease the spectator.

5-84Sleeping satyr (Barberini Faun), from Rome, Italy,

ca. 230–200 bce.Marble, 7 1 high. Glyptothek, Munich.

In this statue of a restlessly sleeping, drunken satyr, a Hellenistic

sculptor portrayed a semihuman in a suspended state of conscious-

ness—the antithesis of the Classical ideals of rationality and discipline.

1 ft.

1 ft.

5-83A

Aphrodite,

Eros, and

Pan, Delos,

ca. 100 BCE.