Figure of Venus; Roman Empire, 3rd-4th century A.D.

Figure of Venus; Roman Empire, III-IV centuries AD.
Terracotta, with slight traces of polychrome.
Measurements: 11 x 3 cm.
Round statuette made of terracotta mold, originally polychrome, representing the goddess Venus naked, covering her breast and sex with her hands. In spite of its static nature, the figure is endowed with naturalism thanks to its position, with the right knee forward and the head turned to the left.
After the idealization of the Augustan era, the realism of the Flavian era and the subsequent baroque of the second and third centuries, Roman sculpture, marked by the presence of Christianity, tends to dehumanize, to become more ideal and symbolic. The concern for realism is lost, and there is a tendency to a schematization that seeks to capture the ideal, the soul or the divinity, and not the human aspect of the figures.