Alberti’s Window

In the Roman copy it does look like she has nipples to me. And even if those two statues don't have nipples, they don't really look like testes.

heidenkind: Yeah, I don't think that they really look like testes either. That's one reason why I'm not convinced by Sieterle's argument. I know that there was a stress on idealization back then, but I doubt that testes would have been idealized beyond recognition!

Kiersten: Ha! It is kind of disturbing, in a way. J thought that it was quite humorous. Perhaps it's disturbingly clever?

Apparently pigs have 18 nipples, which is handy. With Diana, I can only wonder as to the point…?

I thought Diana was, among many other things, a goddess of chastity? Is it possible the statues are repurposed statues of Leto or Hera?

To M and Rebekha –

The confusion about Diana's chastity vs. fertility here is mostly the result of Alberti's not making a distinction between the iconography of Diana (the Greco-Roman chaste huntress with the bow, hunting dogs, virgin followers, and her association the moon) and the "Diana" of Ephesus, who is clearly not Diana at all but a fertility goddess whose name is lost to antiquity.

M is saying that the Anatolian population previously worshipped a mother/fertility goddess from pre-history, and when the Greeks showed up with spears to colonize the place, they allowed the Anatolians to continue worshipping their own Great Mother goddess, simply dubbing her with the new name "Diana."

The more I study ancient religions and mythologies, the stronger the case seems to me for the widespread worship of powerful earth-goddess figures in the millennia before the invention of written language – goddesses that later cultures either assimilated or erased from history.

Hi Christopher! Thanks for your comment (and welcome to my blog – I don't believe that you have commented before). I noticed that you also have an art blog – I'm excited to follow it.

I wasn't aware of Alberti's discussion of Diana/Artemis. By any chance, do you remember where he discusses Diana? I'd love to have a citation or reference to find further information.

And, like you said, the Anatolian mother goddess existed before the Greeks. The Greeks simply adopted her into their culture and renamed her "Artemis" (and later "Diana" by the Romans). I'm not sure how many of her original characteristics were the changed by the Greeks – that would be an interesting research topic.

There does seem to be a widespread worship of mother goddesses in early cultures (and even in some slightly later cultures, after the invention of writing). Have you read any feminist art historians discuss mother goddesses? I remember reading some interesting case studies in the canonical "Feminism and Art History" text (edited by Broude and Garrard).

Ooh, I wasn't aware of this work by Hogarth, David! Thanks for sharing! That's a really interesting piece. I like that Diana was used as the embodiment of Nature for the print.

she may not have nipples, as the things hanging off her may be bull testicles as opposed to breasts. see here http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/ephesus-museum.htm

After reading the text below, I did a Google search, which led me to your website. Thought you might find it interesting and validating of something you wrote about regarding G. Seiterle.

In his lecture “Oh Say, Can You See” eminent art historian and critic Leo Steinberg addressed the problem of writings about art, rather than the art itself, forming the basis by which images are interpreted.

…

Steinberg began his lecture with an appraisal of images of the goddess Diana as she was depicted in Esephus with many large sphere-like objects on her chest. Starting with early Christian commentators these were identified with breasts and connected with Diana’s status as a goddess of fertility. This textual assertion became largely accepted throughout the rest of history and these breasts, or, as Steinberg called them, Unidentified Protruding Objects (UPOs) became more numerous and more obviously associated with breasts by acquiring nipples in later depictions of Diana. All of this flies in the face of the actual depictions of the goddess in the ancient Greek and Roman world where they were obviously not breasts: they lacked nipples and in some images were portrayed as being below actual breasts and on the outside of garments that she wore. It wasn’t until about 30 years ago that they were correctly identified to represent the testicles of bulls that had been sacrificed to her. The theory was advanced and a sculpture of Diana was made using real bull testicles, showing that these exactly replicated what was found on statues in antiquity. This story provided the frame for the entire lecture: that a group of interpreters writing about art could change how a visual image was appreciated for many years since people are often more likely to trust the written interpretation of a respected opinion rather than go to the image itself and see what is really there.

The https://swarthmorephoenix.com/2007/10/25/steinberg-and-art-criticism-bringing-the-focus-back-to-the-image/

My understanding, such as it’s been, has been that the 2nd century sculpture was probably a reprise of an earlier archaic work, destroyed when the temple was set on fire by lunatic arsonist. First question: is that idea holding up? Meanwhile, can’t help thinking that the columnar form – very in-the-block – and the regular arrangement of the animals in registers – which reminds me of the unnaturally controlled rows of curls on archaic statue hair or Mesopotamian beards beards – nostalgically echoed an earlier archaic form for the Ephesian goddess, which might have been held in living memory when this later version, with it’s weirdly combined Hellenistic details, was created as a replacement. My thought is just that it’s possible that the lost original might have had smooth breasts, like any number of ancient votive figures.