Spencer Alley: Caryatid Figures - Ancient Times to Twentieth Century

Monday, January 6, 2020

Caryatid Figures - Ancient Times to Twentieth Century

Ancient Greece
Caryatid from the Erechtheum, Athens
(brought to Great Britain among the Elgin Marbles)
ca. 421-406 BC
marble
British Museum

Roman Empire
The Townley Caryatid
(brought to Great Britain in 1786)
ca. AD 140-160
marble (heavily restored)
British Museum

Jan de Bisschop after Jacques de Gheyn
Antique Caryatid
(Roman Marble Figure now in Munich)
ca. 1672-89
etching
British Museum

from The Other Stars

I loved a statue and watered it daily.
Sooner or later it softened and let me
break a vital part of it off;
with my hard-won prize in my pocket
I explored the streets with a secret,
but before long the plundered piece was
dust in my hands, and painful to look at.

Now another effigy makes me
shudder at its criminal threshold.
More than ever I entertain a
shameless urge to steal or caress it,
but the facts of history tell me
otherwise: you get what you pray for
and the statue dwindles to rubble.

– Rachel Wetzsteon (1994)

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
after Cornelis Bos
Caryatid with Flaming Urn
ca. 1535-40
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Italian Artist after Raphael
Caryatid
(from fresco in the Stanza di Eliodoro, Vatican)
ca. 1550-1650
engraving
British Museum

Girard Audran after Raphael
Figure of Nobility as Caryatid
(from fresco in the Stanza di Eliodoro, Vatican)
ca. 1666-68
etching and engraving
British Museum