Figure 78 The Apoxyomenos by Lysippus: Roman copy in marble of bronze original (which needed no
struts or braces); height of copy 2.05 m, original ca. 330 BC. Vatican Museums, Museo Pio Clementino,
Inv. 1185.
Source: DEA / V. PIROZZI / De Agostini / Getty Images.
In the Hellenistic Period, this intimacy between viewer and work of art was taken still further, into a
realm that bordered on the perilous. Several Roman copies survive of a lost original from the middle of
the third century BC depicting the goddess Aphrodite kneeling at her bath (figure 79). It was thought to be
dangerous to see a goddess in the nude, and a number of myths, one of which features prominently in a
hymn by Callimachus, told of men who had been blinded or subjected to even worse punishment for
accidentally seeing a naked goddess. But this sculpture not only reveals Aphrodite in the nude, it
positively invites the viewer to inspect the goddess from every angle. For her twisting pose means that
there is no “front” and “back” to this statue, as there was in the case of the fully clothed korai of the
Archaic Period. There is no single, proper point from which to view the goddess and be done with it.
This is sculpture that is fully in the round which, by its pose and by the sensuousness of its subject, quite
literally moves the viewer.