Title: Aphrodite of Epidauros
Context: Possibly from Amyklai
Object Function: Cult
Sculptor: Literary attestation to Polykleitos
Material: Bronze?
Sculpture Type: Free-standing statue
Category: Original/copies
Style: High Classical
Technique: In-the-round
Original or Copy: Original (lost)
Date: ca. 410 BC - ca. 400 BC
Scale: Over life-size
Region: Laconia
Period: High Classical

Subject Description:

As restored from copies, this statue of a female deity, probably Aphrodite, stood with her weight on her right leg, with her left foot drawn back slightly. She wore a himation draped diagonally over a thin chiton which may have slipped from her right shoulder. She may have also worn a nebris, as on the Munich copy (Munich GL 236).

The identity of this "original" has been much debated. Earlier scholars identified this female as Dike or a maenad. F. Hauser identified the type with Polykleitos' statue of Aphrodite Amyklaia at the Sanctuary of Apollo at Amyklai, erected by the Spartans as a thank offering for their victory over the Athenians at the Battle at Aigospotamoi in 405, and seen by Pausanias (Paus. 3.18.8). Following P. Amandry's determination that this would have post-dated Polykleitos' period of activity by at least 20 years, the identification has been abandoned, but reinstated recently by A. Delivorrias.

Condition: Lost

Sources Used: A. Delivorrias in Moon 1995, 200-203, 213 n. 7 (with additional bibliography); Vierneisel-Schlörb 1979, no. 19

Other Bibliography: A. Delivorrias in Beck & Bol 1993; Amandry 1957; Hauser 1902.