Fantasising Phryne: The psychology and ethics ofekphrasis

Abstract

‘It's such a pity that we don't haveAnything like a photographOf her about whom the ancients rave …’…Fragments, copies, our museums still holdOf statues she modelled, or so we're told(from Phryne by Robert Conquest, 2000)Phryne, the celebrity hetaira who is said to have lived and loved some time during the fourth century BCE, was reputed to be ‘by far the most phenomenal of the hetairai’ (ἐπιφανεστάτη πολὺ τῶν ἑταίρων). This article aims to examine the anecdotes told about Phryne and argues that collectively they constitute a discourse on viewing that illuminates a significant aspect of the production and interpretation of art: the ethical and aesthetic problems involved (for the artist, subject, model and other viewers) in making and describing naturalistic art, especially that which represents the gods. A rich repertoire of written material on Phryne, and on the statue of the Aphrodite of Cnidus for which she was said to have been the model, has survived, although mostly by later rather than contemporary writers. Among the descriptions of the statue there is a group of epigrams collected in the Greek Anthology whose authorship and dating are largely uncertain. On Phryne we have accounts and imaginative scenarios in Alciphron, Lucian and Pausanias, all presumed to be writing in the second century CE; Athenaeus, who most probably wrote in the third century CE; and quotations from earlier writers.

Is Red Figure the New Black? The Imprisonment of Women in Classical Athens

“…See Cooper (1995); McClure (2003), 41f., 126-36;Eidinow (2010). For Phryne as allegory, see Morales (2011).…”

Seeing Double(s)

“…Morales 2011 offers a stimulating analysis of sources on Phryne and the Cnidian Aphrodite. See especially 85-88 on the dilemmas raised by this work of art.24 For the impact of the Erôtes on the history of sexuality seeFoucault 1984, 211-227;Halperin 1992; Goldhill 1995, 102-111;Hubbard 2009. …”

The Bed Canopy in Xenophon of Ephesus and the Iconography of Mars and Venus Under the Empire

“…Further on particular ecphrasis see Billault (1990) for a brilliant analysis of Andromeda's painting in Heliodorus’ novel. For Callirhoe as echoing Praxiteles’ Cnidian Aphrodite see Hunter (1994), 1075, and Morales (2011). For Xenophon and the representations of the Ephesian Artemision see Tagliabue (2013).…”