Muse (Terpsichore) late 4th-mid 2nd Century BCE, Paros Marble, at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia

The scale and style of this extraordinarily sensitive figure recall decorative sculpture found in grander private homes in Hellenistic Greece, such as the Houses of the Five Statues or of the Diadoumenos on Delos. Her identity is not certain. She shares much with goddesses such as Aphrodite (love), Artemis (hunting), and Themis (established law). However, an attribute made perhaps either of stone, wood, or ivory and now missing, was once dowelled into the top of the tree-stump at her left. This is likely to have been a lyre, identifying the figure as one of the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory). It may be Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance whose name means "she who rejoices in the dance". The softness of the facial features, whose elements flow into one another, was achieved by carving the head separately, to guarantee the very finest marble. This may also at times have enabled division of the carving between master craftsman (head) and workshop (body), but here, the delicacy of the right foot and the intimacy of the whole suggest otherwise.


Image: Muse (Terpsichore) late 4th-mid 2nd Century BCE, Paros Marble, at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.


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