Description
On this attractive statuette of the goddess of Love, she appears standing and looking forward, unafraid of the viewer’s glare. Instead, she hides her modesty with her left hand while with her right hand she offers her breast as a mother would offer to a suckling infant.
By her feet we discern a squat vase and she appears bedecked with jewelry, anklets, bracelets, necklace, and a royal crown. Here, Aphrodite stands before us no longer as simply the traditional Greek goddess of Love, the cause of often misplaced human erotic passion but as a Mother goddess, the Giver of Life and Nourishment. She also reveals herself to be a Queen-Goddess, much in the way that the Egyptian goddess Isis is conceived. There is little doubt that this Aphrodite is a Hellenistic Egyptian syncretism of Isis and Aphrodite and that is what makes this particular statuette extremely interesting. Originally, with a white slip coating and then painted, now with traces of the ancient coloration.
Size: 11 ¾” in.x 4 ¼” in.
