O statuetă a Venerei aflată la Apulum

A statue of Venus found at Apulum

Autor: Radu Ota

 

The author talks about a white-grey marble statue of Venus found at Apulum. It belongs to the old collections of the National Museum from Alba Iulia and it preserves in a fragmentary state. The legs are covered with a palla keeped by the left hand. It preserves the torso until the navel. The breasts and the head are lacking. We can frame this artefact in the type of half-nacked Venus. The prototypes of this copy are Venus of Cnidos made by Praxiteles or Venus of Melos. The dimensions are: height-20,7 cm, breadth-8,5 cm, thickness-7 cm.

Probably, this art opera is the single marble copy of this iconography type in the Roman province Dacia. There are a lot of bronze and clay analogies in this province. For example, the bronze statues were discovered at roman camps from Drobeta and Buciumi, and the clay statues, at Apulum, Ulpia Traiana, Moldoveneşti and Slăveni. In the central or occidental provinces, the marble statues of this iconography type were made at Aquincum, Carnuntum and Bassianae, in Pannonia, in the roman settlements of Gallia or in the south province Moesia Inferior, at the greek harbour Histria. We date this piece from the late Antonin period or the first decades of the third century A.D.

 

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