Footnotes

• Provenance:
  Property of a Private Trust.
  Swiss private collection, Ticino, since 1938.
  
  Literature:
  This bust owes its sense of serene divinity to the Praxitelean type of the 4th Century B.C., characterised by the softly curving features and wavy hair of the Aphrodite of Knidos. For a related Aphrodite head from Kos, also of the 3rd Century B.C. which demonstrates the softly moulded facial features of this period, cf. M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, New York, 1955, fig. 32.
  
  However, the identity of the goddess is by no means certain and in fact the facial proportions of this bust appear more slender than usually found in depictions of Aphrodite of this period, recalling contemporary representations of the goddess Artemis instead. Indeed, the drapery at the neck show that this bust was intended for a fully-clothed figure and therefore more likely perhaps to depict Artemis, cf. M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, New York, 1955, fig.41.
  
  The use of inlaid eyes reflects the original medium of bronze in which many of Praxiteles' and his contemporaries' works were produced. Other marble copies of original bronzes were produced with eyes hollowed for inlay such as the Athena Lemnia head in the Archaeological Museum of Bologna, but most are all now missing their eyes. This bust, with surviving original inlaid eyes, allows us a sense of the Knidos: 'melting gaze of the eyes with their bright and joyous expression...to preserve the spirit of Praxiteles (Lucian Eikones, 6).