The “Aphrodite” of Lyons

Extract

The photographs of Pl. XII. shew a cast which is now in the Acropolis Museum at Athens. The upper part of the figure (minus the two fragments of the left arm) is usually known as the Aphrodite of Lyons or of Marseilles: the lower part and the fragments of the left arm are in the Acropolis Museum (the lower part, Dickins no. 269). As the photographs shew, these fragments are all parts of a single statue: the lower part joins the upper over a small area on the right side, the arm-fragments join over the whole of the inner broken surfaces. The join on the right side is not visible in the photographs here reproduced, but the relation of the two pieces is sufficiently clear from the correspondence of the folds of the drapery. The Lyons fragment was first mentioned in a work published in 1719, and must have reached France at the end of the seventeenth or at the beginning of the eighteenth century.