Women in Greek Sculpture

                                                

The portrayal of women in Greek sculpture is greatly indicative of their particular role and cultural positioning within the Grecian society that they occupied. We see this in aspects of the statues of men and women, such as the clothing, pose, physical characterizations as well as the general scarcity of statues of women in classical Greece.

                Clothing is an important indicator of this. All classical Greek sculptures of women up until the famous Knidian Aphrodite were clothed (Melissa Huang, Gender Portrayals in Classical Greek Statuary, melissahuang.com) whereas male nudes were almost the norm.

 

Here we have the Knidian Aphrodite alongside Polykleitos’s Doryphoros. Doryphoros here is representative of the classically traditional attempts at sculpture. The male form is clearly anatomically and proportionally accurate; this is the Greek emphasis at mimesis (to accurately imitate the object of its attention). We also see an idealization of the male form as with all other Greek male statues. The brazen pose with exposed genitals (something that is inconceivable even for the revolutionary Knidian Aphrodite) are all cultural indicators of the acceptance and prevalence of nudity in male statues at the time. Nudity in men conferred their power, their strong body and equally strong mind (Ibid). Art itself was used as a hallmark for the values of Greek culture. It formed the archetypes of how their ethos thought of virtue and this is what they tried to infuse in their hyper idealized artwork (especially of male nudes).

                The Knidian Aphrodite by Praxiteles was as stated earlier the first female nude statue produced by Classical Greece. Prior to this a number of sculptures had carved women in wet drapery to display the female body in an acceptable manner. Praxiteles was obviously aware of this and tactful in his approach to female nudity. In picking Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty he justified her appearance in a nude form. It is important to note here that what is deemed inappropriate for a Greek woman is yet appropriate for a Greek Goddess. Nudity here is hence an obvious indicator of the power of the subject.

                Yet even the Goddess of love and beauty herself cannot be as brazen with her body as the average male nude. The pose we see the Knidian Aprhodite in is the famous pudica (again the first example of its kind) which was made famous by Botticelli’s painting, The Birth of Venus. The hand over the pubis indicates chastity and any sensuality found in the sculpture would be unintentional (Ostrow, Ann Olga, and Claire L. Lyons 1997. 200). The male form as typified by Doryphoros has no such pretensions to modesty with his genitals clearly on display. The pose however (the pudica) also has the probably unintentional effect of drawing attention to the woman’s pubis. Aphrodite’s pubis here is again interesting as it is devoid of both hair and any indication of genitalia. This is curious as the Grecian culture spent a significant amount of time detailing male genitalia on their statues. To not understate the case, the Greeks even had an active cultural preoccupation with genitalia. They depicted the genitalia of Egyptians and all other foreigners as large and bulbous which was considered a sign of their barbarity, their own was always depicted as small and tapered in their statues. The most prominent theories today suggest that the exposed genitalia of a woman would be thought of as sexually aggressive (a masculine trait discouraged in women) (Stewart Andrew F 1997. 99). The lack of pubic hair is easily accounted for by the prevalence of depilation (hair removal) in Grecian society, especially among the upper classes.

                Sculpture itself as a form of art provides insights into the functioning and outlook of its indigenous society at large. The focus of this piece being women in Greek sculpture has displayed the cultural positioning of women vis-à-vis men in Grecian society. In doing so it has come across aspects of their respective gender roles such as attitudes to nudity and sexuality as practiced during the classical period.

References: 1. Ostrow, Ann Olga, and Claire L. Lyons. “Making a World of Difference: Gender, asymmetry, and the Greek nude.” In Naked truths: women, sexuality, and gender in classical art and archaeology. New York: Routledge, 1997.

                       2. Stewart, Andrew F.. “Of War and Love.” In Art, desire, and the body in ancient Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.