Candelabrum with Aphrodite
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Let There Be Light, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, March 11-April 26, 1964.
Art of the Late Antique, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, December 17, 1968-February 16, 1969.
Echoes from Olympus: The Minor Arts of Classical Antiquity, University of California Art Museum, August 15-December 15, 1974.
The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 19, 1977-February 12, 1978.
Lighting in Early Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, October 2, 1984-January 6, 1985.
Beyond the Pharaohs: Egypt and the Copts: Crossroads in Egyptian Culture, 2nd-7th Centuries, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, February 10-April 16, 1989; The Walters Art Gallery, May 21-July 16, 1989.
Byzantine Women and their World, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, October 25-April 27, 2002-2003.
How to explain all this imagery? According to some scholars, the sea creatures are amorously embracing the women as Aphrodite prepares herself for a comparable night of love--just as the owner of this lampstand would do as she applied her own make-up by the light of this sumptuous work.
John Pierpont (J. P.) Morgan (1837-1913), New York, by 1913;
With Piero Tozzi, New York, by 1956-1958;
Purchased from Tozzi by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.
Marvin Ross, “A Coptic Marriage Lampstand in Bronze,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 2, no. 1 (March 1959): 1-4.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 47.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 57.
Katharine Reynolds Brown, “318. Lamp- or candelstand with Aphrodite,” in The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, ed. Kurt Weitzmann, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977), 338-39.
Victor Elbern, “Leuctertrâger fur byzantinische Soldaten,” Aachener Kunstblätter 50 (1982): 156-57, fig. 16.
Eunice Dauterman Maguire, Henry P. Maguire, and Maggie J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House, Illinois Byzantine Studies 2, exh. cat. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 180, 182, fig. 45.
Gary Vikan, “51. Lampstand: Aphrodite,” in Beyond the Pharaohs: Egypt and the Copts in the 2nd and 7th Centuries A.D., Florence Friedman, exh. cat. (Providence, RI: Rhode Island School of Design, 1989), 143.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 125.
Alicia Walker, “111. Lampstand with Aphrodite,” in Byzantine Women and Their World, ed. Ioli Kalavrezou (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 198-99, (repro.).
Marice Rose, “Rev. of Ioli Kalavrezou, Byzantine Women and Their World,” Woman’s Art Journal 28, no. 1 (Spring – Summer 2007): 65, fig. 1.
Laskarina Bouras and Maria Parani, Lighting in Early Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection Publications 11 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 82-83, (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 21, fig. 56.
