Terracotta Figurine Of Lady With Dove from Tanagra (late fourth or third century B.C.). Wrapped in a voluminous cloak
(himation), with a fan in her left hand, and her hair centrally parted and gathered in a chignon at the back of her head, she is the
height of early Hellenistic fashion. Such figurines were highly popular trinkets at the time.
Another important category of statue was the female nude. Praxiteles' much admired Aphrodite of Cnidus (above, p. 294) was the
forerunner of a long series of Hellenistic Aphrodites, including a beautiful statue from Cyrene and the self-conscious poseuse
commemorated in the Capitoline Venus. An interesting variant is the crouching goddess attributed by some to a Bithynian sculptor
of the third century: the thrusting knees, the raised right and lowered left arm, the sharply turned head, and the torsion about the
waist, accentuated by unflattering folds of flesh, produce an effect of tension and imminent movement which would have been
inconceivable in any statue before the time of Lysippus. Equally restless, but much more subtle, is the majestic Aphrodite from
Melos (Venus de Milo), a late-second-century work. Here the slightly twisting torso and the broad mass of drapery clinging
precariously to the hips and sweeping over the raised and advanced left thigh were merely part of the complex composition: one has
also to imagine the missing arms, which must have been extended to the side, perhaps holding a bronze shield in which the goddess
admired her reflection.
A whole range of themes which would have been considered undignified or demeaning in the art of previous centuries now entered
the repertory of sculptors: sleeping figures, drunks, cupids, old hags, thugs, hermaphrodites. Some of the more playful subjects, such
as the delightful sleeping cherub in New York, the famous boy-and-goose composition of Boethus, and the various tussles between
nymphs and satyrs, have reminded commentators of the rococo of the eighteenth century; and they indeed betoken the same sort of
light-hearted, almost frivolous taste. Many must have been designed for the amusement of wealthy private collectors. So too may
some of the more ugly and horrific subjects. They tend to be characterized as examples of Hellenistic 'realism'; but a glance at the
bronze boxer in the Terme Museum in Rome, with his ostentatious wounds, exaggerated musculature, yet artistically ordered hair,
will show that even now Greek sculptors were more concerned with types than with real appearances.