Venus with mirror. Ancient Rome, 1st century AD
Bronze.
Provenance: Private collection, New York, acquired at Christie's in 1981.
Publications: Christie's Antiquities and Tribal Art, 26 June 1981, Lot 162.
Good condition, with two faults on the base due to the fineness of the bronze.
Measurements: 31,8 cm. high.
Important bronze sculpture from the Roman period. The theme of the Venus of the mirror, which will know an important development in the history of art, appears here in its genuine manifestation. The nude young woman, standing, adopts a graceful movement, slightly bending her left leg. She rests on the sole of the foot of her right leg, and her torso draws a tenuous contrapposto with her hips, while her head turns to her left, where the goddess holds the hand mirror. Her long hair, chiselled in waves, is gathered and falls in two braids on either side of her bare shoulder.
This type of figure of Aphrodite belongs to the series of models created essentially in the Hellenistic school of Alexandria, in which the goddess loses a good part of her divine appearance to adopt anecdotal attitudes in which the characteristic actions of the bath are depicted. Although there is a direct dependence on the episode of the goddess' own birth in Cyprus and her emergence from the sea, Alexandrian artists recreated the poses of drying and combing her hair, in which she is often assisted by Eros. The moment of looking into the mirror to compose the hairstyle would serve over the centuries to provide the basis for human reflection on the transience of beauty.
In Hellenistic circles, numerous versions of the goddess were produced at different moments of her grooming, inspiring in the following centuries, in particular marble statuary and Roman bronze statuettes, such as the one in question.