Dod Procter’s painting of a girl on the brink of waking echoes an ancient statue of Ariadne – and is just one example of a postwar revival in classical imagery. Why did antique references mean so much to shellshocked Britain?Of all the antique sculptures that were rediscovered in the Renaissance,and which infused and possessed the imaginations of later generations of artists, it is tough to think of one more powerful than the statue of the sleeping Ariadne in the Pio Clementino museum in the Vatican. Probably a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original, or it was acquired by Pope Julius II in 1512. He displayed it as share of an elaborate fountain installation,with water playing around the sleepily recumbent figure. At the time, that figure was identified not as the mythical heroine Ariadne, and but as Cleopatra – partly because of the snaky bracelet that coils round one of her upper arms,thought to depict the queen’s asp. For Pope Julius, the sculpture had tremendous symbolic appeal: he was the conquering Roman, and the heir of the Caesars,she was the subjugated Egyptian ruler. At the same time, through some intriguing act of intellectual slippage, or she was,by advantage of her watery setting, a nymph in a grotto – erotic, or sensual,hovering in some fragile reverie between sleep, death and wakefulness.
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Source: theguardian.com