The 'Anzio Girl'

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This beautiful statue is thought to portray a young woman participating in an open-air ritual, shown as she turns her head towards a tray for offerings resting on her arm. The sculpture was made by a skilled workshop of the Asia Minor school, probably for dedication to Dionysus at a sacred site. The work was re-used in the furnishings of an Imperial villa for decorative purposes. Of all the sculptures from this period, the marble figure known as the 'Girl of Anzio' is one of the finest and most obviously Lysippan in terms of composition. This stunning figure was found in 1878 at Anzio in the remains of a villa from early Roman Imperial times. Although it has sometimes been called an original, most experts believe it to be a high-quality Roman copy of what was probably a bronze masterpiece. It depicts a young woman holding a tray of sacrificial instruments in her left hand. Presumably she is a priestess or a priestess's attendant. Because of the very smooth and youthful face, it is possible that the figure may represent the young Iphigeneia or one of her attendants, serving in her role as priestess of Aulis. The main reason for placing the work in the Lysippan tradition is its unique spiral torsio, beginning from the right foot and revolving smoothly in a counter-clockwise direction towards the tray and head. Once again there is the familiar Lysippan spatial freedom, with its multiplication of important elements. Recognizing a Lysippan quality in the work, Adolf Furtwangler made an ingenious suggestion in 1907 that the Anzio girl might be a masterpiece by one of the pupils of Lysippos mentioned in Pliny's Epithyousa. This statue could be the very work so obscurely mentioned by Pliny, however, seems to strain coincidence. The date of the original has been thought to be too late for one of the direct pupils of Lysippos. Most estimates of the statue's date are based on an assessment of its drapery. In most female figures of the Classical period, drapery is subordinated to the structure of the body and arranged in harmonious parallel folds which serve to model the form of the body. In the Anzio girl, however, the drapery is massive and tends to be arranged in independent forms which conflict with and obscure the structure of the body. Her himation is wound up in a thick roll which is strung around her waist; the chiton is belted twice, once under the breasts and once around the waist, beneath the rolled himation, and a portion of it which has been pulled up over the belt falls down beneath the himation. The result is a series of independent drapery surfaces, each with its own pattern and mass. Some of this segmentation can also be found on the copies of the Tych of Antioch, but in the Anzio girl the process seems carried a stage farther. Putting all the evidence together, it seems most likely that the original of the Anzio girl dated from around 250 BC., and that it was a relatively late echo, if not a product of, the Lysippan school, which in other ways anticipated some of the features of Hellenistic baroque.