There are a number of Roman copies, showing considerable variation, of the Greek prototype of the Crouching Aphrodite. This particular one was a favourite of Cézanne, who sketched it in the Louvre and adapted it in one of his “Les Grandes Baigneuses”.
Various sculptors, identities and historical references have been attached to the sculpture, but the evidence is thin. The vestige of a hand on her back presumably belonged to the baby Eros, with whom Aphrodite is frequently depicted
Paris, Louvre 2240
Purchased in 1884 from the Louvre
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 319 (n.7 & 9)
Lawrence, Later Greek Sculpture (1927), pl. 25a
Louvre Catalogue Sommaire (1922), 39, pl. XXI
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 95, no.519
Found in 1828 at Vienne in south eastern France, a provincial capital of the Roman Empire