Commodus / Aphrodite Anchialos -- reference help please?

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Has anyone seen this one before?  It's a Capitoline-Venus-styled Aphrodite* from Anchialos, and not noted in Varbanov (Bulgarian edition) or in Moushmov online.  Moushmov does note an Anchialos Aphrodite for Maximinus I, but that's some decades later, so this one is fairly intriguing.  Thanks for any / all leads!  Best,
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     * https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=25309.msg218703#msg218703

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Oof, when we're dealing with Strack, it helps to have the Nominal.  Well, evidently a Dreier, an Æ24 or thereabouts, weighing something like the one in Berlin, 8.12g.  It's AMNG II, 1 (all that there is), p. 268, no. 598, which was one of Mushmov's sources, so he probably has it.  It is illustrated by Strack, Taf. VII, 32.  He calls it Medici type; note that it has an Eros riding the dolphin at her feet, and so has the marble statue in the Uffizi, the Medici Aphrodite, which is in a more flirtatious high Hellenistic style than the Capitoline type.  It also is Varbanov II, no. 1023 (in the Bulgarian edition), illustrated.  He cites only Mushmov for it, so it ought to be found with one of those numbers on it in the Wildwinds Mushmov list, now separated from the coins sold list, which is clearer.
Actually by the date of AMNG II, 1912, Mushmov's book, 1912, is independent of AMNG.  Has to be.  Mushmov 2887 (with a very amusing translation of pudica).
Coins that have the Aphrodite with the eros on the dolphin are pretty rare, but I know I could find a copy of the Capitoline type (bowknot hair, head not turned back) that used the dolphin to make the leg support higher and cuter.  I'll have to get back to your image and check which one it seems to be (some are rather generic), but the Eros on the dolphin is not itself decisive.  Pat L.
OK, so much for Max Thrax.  Let's start over in Strack for Commodus: yours may be really rare.  Crispina has a Capitoline Aphrodite , AMNG II, p. 229, 451, Taf. VI, 20, but it looks less like yours.  Strack doesn't have one for Commodus, nor for Julia Domna (nor Septimius, who likes to do as the late Antonines did, so I checked).  Not Lindgren II-III.
Adjusted levels for greater legibility; please pardon.  Seems to stand alone; if has two blobs for a bowknot hairdo, Capitoline; if looks to our r. over her shoulder, Medici type.
Very exciting coin, IMO.  Pat L.

[slokind]

I think yours may be unlisted and unpublished, though it's hard to say.
I think it's a Medici, as Strack said of the Max Thrax.
Here they are, Paris for Capitoline type, New York for Medici, less restored and much better reassembled than the name copy.
And below them, the Max Thrax for comparison, not nearly as nice style as Commodus's Aphrodite!
And in the RPC Antonine on line, compare this one at Selge:
http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/9732/?search&stype=quick&q=Commodus+Aphrodite&rno=17

[curtislclay]

Coin should be submitted to the RPC IV database.  Can you make a better image?

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Hello again, Pat and Curtis; thanks for your quick replies, and Pat, thanks for your largesse of notes which suggest that indeed this Anchialos Venus is fairly unique.  I would be glad to send the image on to the RPC database, though I doubt we could ever do much better than Pat's improved version of my scan; the coin is fairly worn, though attractive, without sharp detail. *  It's especially useful to have Pat's account of the ways that the Medici and Capitoline versions of Venus-Aphrodite could be recombined in coin-representations of the goddess; this one lacks the Capitoline hairdo, but also the Medici dolphin, with Cupid attached.  Do you think that caelator-esthetics or local designs in 3-D make the difference when this or that detail shows up on a coin or does not?  I am thinking of these Aphrodites on coins from Nikopolis ad Istrum -- if it weren't for the shared place of origin, probably no one would even suppose they could both represent the same statue.  Again thanks for your comments!  Sincerely,

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  * The coin was not especially expensive, so of course I could ship it at need.

[areich]

I think yours may be unlisted and unpublished, though it's hard to say.
I think it's a Medici, as Strack said of the Max Thrax.
Here they are, Paris for Capitoline type, New York for Medici, less restored and much better reassembled than the name copy.
And below them, the Max Thrax for comparison, not nearly as nice style as Commodus's Aphrodite!
And in the RPC Antonine on line, compare this one at Selge:
http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/9732/?search&stype=quick&q=Commodus+Aphrodite&rno=17

Pat, do they have one of those at the BM, or do I remember it incorrectly?
The right one is wonderful!

[slokind]

I, too, like the Medici type, and the New York one is delightful.  Why should an Aphrodite not be playful? 
Those two coins exempligy the two DISTINCT statues.  The Julia Domna Æ20, which I have in a poor specimen is very nice, but her topknot, even on yours, is off the flan; the tresses on either side of her neck, however, are plain.  The Septimius family at Nicopolis have Capitoline type.  Septimius himself has it as early as the governorship of Auspex (attached).  For Septimius, an anonymous issue very like the Auspex one, shows the hairdo better.  The large Æ26 issued by Gallus for Domna at Nicopolis shows all the Capitoline traits (attached).  The origin of the Capitoline type has been attributed and dated all over the place, but the Empire loved her.  I do not doubt, personally, that the Medici type was created in High Hellenistic Asia Minor--or by a sculptor trained there, the same thing.
The die that Macrinus and Diadumenian share at Nicopolis, issued by Agrippa, is as wild as the Apollo Sauroktonos in similar style and date.  The pose is unmistakable, but the engraver could not have understood it, or he wouldn't have given her a cape and boots; it has even been taken for a male, but males, even effeminate ones, NEVER adopt the pudica pose, perhaps not even in cross-dressing acts on the BBC or in night clubs.  No, it's a Medici type, iconographically ill informed.  Pat L.
Andreas: I don't think the BM has one of the Medici, but I'll try to check; they may well have a 'Capitoline' type.
P.S. This thesis isn't sharply focused, but it has all you want on the Aphrodite types and bibliography, too:
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04142005-032052/

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Pat, again thanks for these expert notes; I agree that your coins mainly favor the Capitoline Venus, though the Septimius you picture does borrow the Medici turn to the right, and though there's a Plautilla from Thrace (*) that shares my Diadumenian issue's near-Medici program, thankfully minus its Nacho-Libre-like interpolations of booties and cape.  I imagine that some silly person just added those features in cloth (?) to an extant stone statue; a muddled memory of the Belvedere Apollo tried to force its way onto or into a demi-demure-Aphrodite arrangment without really impacting or altering the basic near-Medici scheme. So I guess the coins could all refer to a single statuary design edited in particular details for this or that patron or issue.  As for males striking pudica-poses, Rowan Atkinson's frightful Birth of Beanus pastiche in a sense proves that it can be done, in a sense proves it shouldn't.  Along with a rare Serdica variant of J.D.'s Rome-specific not-at-all demure Venus I attach an appealing lead plaque of pre-pudica Venus with altar; I have already gleaned a good deal from the LIMG's analogues for the image but would be very grateful for anything else you could add to the mix.

   * http://www.coinarchives.com/a/lotviewer.php?LotID=112487&AucID=128&Lot=1886

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That lead plaque again (size approx. 30 x 50 mm):

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-- and again (really!):

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Many thanks for the link to A. Arvello's thesis; very useful--great work!  In case this too is useful, I attach another Julia D. Medici-type that is not in the thesis, an AE 32 from Apollonia in Illyria, with a better example, "sehr selten" aVF, that was sold in M&M GmbH 15.265 (2004) -- references there apparently to M. Bernhart, Aphrodite auf Griechischen Muenzen, [1936?], 39, 234, RBN 1865, 397.8.

[slokind]

When, as in Nicopolis ad Istrum, in the first half of the reign of Septimius Severus, the Aphrodite has tresses on both sides of her neck and two blobs for the bowknot hairdo at the top of the head, it is the Capitoline type.  It is elementary that on a coin they will show the face in profile if they can: look what happens when the head is actually frontal on Gallus's Aphrodite and Eros (above).    Plautilla has one at Pautalia: http://www.coinarchives.com/a/lotviewer.php?LotID=22654&AucID=24&Lot=772.  As I said, the Capitoline type was the popular one, so when it's not very plain, in view of the huge number of Capitoline copies, it's likelier a Capitoline (and I repeat, yet again, they are equally apt to have dolphin supports, with or without Eros for further reinforcement).  Statuary types seem to be particular to cities.  See SNG Deultum for theirs.
The thesis to which I posted a link does contain a lot, but she wanted to make it a feminist thesis, which I have no background in, and it was blood, sweat, and tears the whole way.  She did not understand why I wanted her to use the coins, and, of course, the thesis adviser cannot tell the candidate something outright.  It is, however, very useful, because there is so much in it and, so far as I know, all her references are correct.  I never would have OKd a thesis proposal if it hadn't focused on a specific type, but she finished it five years after beginning and nearly 100 miles away.   The rule for MA theses is that they should be a topic such as a publishable article could encompass.   I made her remove dozens of female fertility images from the early chapter.  The little frontal female lead mage posted somewhere above also is irrelevant to what was put on coins under the Empire.  Pat L.

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And thank you for the background for Arvello's thesis; when confronted with such an embarrassment of riches it is probably better in the end to foreground the riches not the embarrassment.  I beg to differ about the irrelevance of the Anadyomene posture to imperial coinage; see especially the specimens below, definitely even more underdressed than the ones on my plaque.  There are numerous other examples in the Lexicon Iconographicum, though I cannot remember offhand whether many or most are on coins.  At least I did not link you directly to Rowan Atkinson's poster, Birth of Beanus.  Hoping this expiates, With best wishes,
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Above I posted the very rare Auspex Septimius / Capitoline Aphrodite, because Auspex dates it very early in Septimius's reign, but there is one without Auspex's name, that I posted before, in this thread, in Reply #2: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=28625.msg185713#msg185713   I hate to waste server space.
I know that art history is a very complicated discipline, and its very breadth makes special empirical (really look closely, as in a lab) and intellectual (use categories carefully) discipline necessary.  I don't mean to nag, but it's all the traits and qualities together that make a Type, and we use Venus Pudica for the Greco-Roman ones that are too generalized or too careless to be distinguished.
But I'll post the one without 'Auspikos'  again here.  See the topknot?  Pat L.

[slokind]

Re: Anadyomene.  The plaque is highly relevant to mythology: she rises from the sea with wet hair, and to cult: the Anadyomene is a special object of worship, and both the Hellenistic statuary types of Aphrodite running her fingers through her wet hair and the votive plaques that simply state the motif as an object of worship would be relevant to the study of Aphrodite Anadyomene, and there are Greek Imperial coins that show such statuary types.  Deultum, that very interesting Colonia, has one (attached):
• 23 01 06 Æ22  5.72g  6:30h  Deultum.  Gordian III, laureate, draped bust to r.  [IMP G]ORDIANVS PIVS FEL AVG.  Rev., Aphrodite, quasi-Anadyomene, half draped, frontal, spreading out her hair to dry it; at l. by her feet a large hydria.  Whether this is interpreted literally as a bath scene or the hydria stands in for the water from which as Anadyomene she rises, seems moot and probably unimportant.  [C]O[L F]L P    AC DEVLT.  Jurukova 244; with different obv. die, ctr 165.  Now, SNG Deultum nos. 1313-1314, as distinct from 1315 (the "Pudica" which is commoner for Tranquillina, but exists for Gordian as well, besides the coins showing a temple with her in it).

But the Anadyomene, whether statue or coin, is not relevant to the Aphrodite on your Commodus coin.  That is why I call much of the stuff in auction catalogues 'generic boilerplate'.  It's OK to use it to cater to the Hunts and other such customers, but we  must remember that it's there for them, not for us.  For us, the Jurukova reference and the SNG reference.

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I agree that distinctions are crucial, among them the distinction between theory and practice; it is good to distinguish in theory between Medici and Capitoline types even though they are both Venus pudica types, since in theory as well as in fact (since the heads and the faces are differently treated) there are real formal differences between them.  But there are also very close similarities in bodily posture, which is why, after all, they're both pudica types, and caelators in practice could be more or less keen on respecting the difference in face-treatment.  Thus the previous Septimius you posted does use a right profile, although it probably starts with Capitoline Venus as its model, and in many instances caelators quite clearly can take or leave other peripheral features, for instance the dolphins and altars we've briefly discussed.  As for whether or not Venus Rising = Anadyomene is germane to Imperial coinage in general and Anchialos coinage in particular, yes, the Anadyomene posture is distinct from the pudica posture, non-demure versus demi-demure, but pictorial practice does frequently treat them as cognate and similarly sexy-but-innocent takes on Foam-Born Venus' signature nakedness, witness that semi-anadyomene instance you mention above.  Several more mixed or pure Anadyomene types on Imperial coinage, which are certainly useful to fill out the range of allied Venus-types for the Venus-type we've been discussing:
   [DEAD LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN](very close to my plaque)
   [DEAD LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN](clearly Anadyomene, but conflated with Venus as seen in the Judgment of Paris)
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Another elegant coined Anadyomene:

http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/phrygia/apameia/SNGvA_3476.jpg

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And one last, from Silandos in Lydia:

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Oh, thank you.  That is a beauty.  I rather think she (the Anadyomene) belongs to Asia Minor, anyway.  The Louvre has an interesting pastiche of the Crouching Aphrodite with the head, shoulders, and arms of the Anadyomene, which, as I recall, came from Rhodes.  Of course, in the myth, she landed in Cyprus, but I doubt that the workshops of Cyprus were up to creating the Standing Anadyomene type.  Pat L.

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You are right to point up the connection between crouching and rising Aphrodites, even though on some levels the poses could not be more different.  Sometimes a girl just needs to dry her hair; the just-born Aphrodite for one can do so with the sort of ease Greeks usually saved for male nudes.  It's so rare an exemption that one wonders why it ever ends up recorded on coins; is the drachm intimating that mores are different in Amisos, or just replicating a beautiful sculpture as such?

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The famous Amisos drachm for Sabina is simply the Crouching Aphrodite.  It was too hard to show her right hand folded farther inward.  This coin is also part of the evidence (not quite conclusive) that the statue itself originated in NW Asia Minor and perhaps even some warrant for the attribution to the otherwise unknown Doidalses of Bithynia.  Speaking of coins that I covet, this is one of them.  Pat L.

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I agree that the original Crouching Aphrodite was not mainly intent on her hair, but it's striking how often her right hand ends up at least quasi-involved with her hair in the later imitations, and in several intriguing pastiches besides the Rhodes instance you note:

http://www.aeria.phil.uni-erlangen.de/photo_html/plastik/weiblich/sitzend/aphrodite/kauernd.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lely_Venus
http://www.insecula.com/oeuvre/O0000061.html
http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/S10.16.html (another version of the Rhodes Aphrodite)

Don't you think there's a shade of the same in the Amisos drachm?   

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AERIA site is invaluable.  Only the copy from Tivoli in the Terme (now in Pal. Massimo) has its own unretouched and never broken head.  Yes, that's the Rhodes variant, Late Hellenistic.  I think the Louvre has one of that variant, too.
I think that the Amisos drachm is a very small, though on the whole remarkably good, evocation of the statue, one of the master compositions from antiquity, I agree.
Pat L.
I can't find my old (pre-digital) photo of the room, as it was, with four crouching Aphrodites, but here is their lovely Hellenistic terracotta based on the statue type; note that her hair is all fastened up.  As I recall, this is about 7" or c.18cm tall.  Looks like Myrina to me, but I don't have the catalogue at hand.

[Britannicus]

The Amisus drachm is on my wants list too...
Here's a larger numismatic crouching Aphrodite, from Nicaea in Bithynia (Severus Alexander). (Only the reverse, as I'm cameraless at present.)

Francis

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The one I do most covet from Sayles IV.  It has the Eros behind (his hand preserved on the Vienne copy, his whole figure in one of the Naples replicas).  Of course, not all replicas and variants have an Eros who, from the sculptor's point of view, is just another external support, like a treetrunk or a dolphin.
This is one of the most wonderful creations in all of sculpture, folding up a full woman's body like this—minimizing protruding parts that break easily and, in marble, require attachment in most cases, and making a composition of unending interest in all sorts of light and from all sides.
Art is not Nature; Nature is not Art.  Cuckoos in the Vienna Woods is not Beethoven's Sixth Symphony; the thunder storm in that work is Art not Weather.  A minor composer's attempt to evoke stormy weather may fail and be unimportant as Art.  A major composer might forget about the weather motif and still go on to produce a masterpiece.
That is why a dolphin or an Eros can be, sometimes, of minor importance for meaning (verbal meaning) but major importance for support of a ton of marble.
Pat L.