27. Athena Farnese, detail of head.

Image details

Description: Athena Farnese, detail of head

TitleAthena Farnese, detail of head

Creator nameUnknown

Creator nationality/cultureRoman

Creator roleSculptor

Creation datec. 430 BC

Object typeSculpture

MaterialsMarble

DimensionsUnknown

LocationNational Archaeological Museum, Naples

Accession numberInv. No. 6024

SubjectsSerpents in artGoddesses, Greek, in artMarble sculpture, Roman

StatusPreviously located at Villa Albani, Rome; Roman copy of a Greek original by the circle of Phidias

Related content: Chapters (1) Images (7)

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IV. Beauty and Sublimity

Alex Potts

Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History

This chapter takes as its point of departure a puzzle—the apparently paradoxical gendering that occurs when Winckelmann exemplifies the sublime style by a female figure, the Niobe (Plate 15), and the beautiful style by a male one, the Laocoon (Plate 16). At one level he appears to be reversing conventional sexual paradigms. In the aesthetics of the period the sublime, with its intimations of power, elevation, or austerity, was usually associated with the masculine, and the beautiful, with its …

Author

Alex Potts

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.113-144

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00050.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14697&redirecttoanchor=13257

Chapter subject tags:Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 1717-1768Art--HistoriographyAestheticsSculpture, GreekMale nude in art

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