Sappho, Korinna und die anderen

Eine Kopienkritik des Frauenbildnisses ›Typus Astor-Schliemann‹

Abstract

Female poets writing in Greek are known from classical literature, and from the sources we also learn that statues by artists known to us were erected in honour of quite a few poetesses. Not a single sculptural portrait survives of a female poet who is known to us by name, and yet various female portraits from the late Classical and early Hellenistic periods have been interpreted as poets. Of these the ›Astor-Schliemann Type‹, preserved in three copies, is the best known thanks to replicas in Hever Castle, Berlin and the Vatican. The investigation confirms the view held to date, that the lost original was created in the late 4th cent. B.C.; the alternative judgement that it is a classicizing work from the 1st cent. B.C. is refuted. The fourth replica – reproduced in full for the first time – from the Vatican cannot contribute anything to the original’s specific stylistic features, but it does confirm the importance of the depicted figure for contemporaries. A fifth version, a fragment formerly in the depot of the Archaeological Museum of Sparta, now lost, is of outstanding formal quality and must be relatively close to the original.