Ariadne was a motif more commonly seen in paintings and reliefs than in sculpture in the round, and was popular on sarcophagi due to the promise of eternal life that her story offered. The theme shown here is that of the troubled sleep the Ariadne endures. Theseus abandoned her after she helped him to escape from the Minotaur’s labyrinth, but she dreams that Dionysos, a god not a mortal, wants to marry her
Rome, Vatican, Galleria delle Statue 414
Purchased in 1884 from the Louvre
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 347 (n.3), pl. 112.4
Müller: Römische Mittheilung LIII (1938), 164-
Amelung: Catalogue of the Vatican Museum II (1908), 636-43
Brunn-Bruckmann: Denkmäler Griechischer und Römischer Skulptur, pl. 167
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 106, no.556
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 894, no.523
Ridgway, B: Hellenistic Sculpture (1990), vol. I, 330
Bieber, M: Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (1981), 145
Haskell & Penny: Taste and the Antique (1981), 184
Found in Rome
