NAKED AMAZONS

XCEPT FOR A STRAY BARE BREAST AND OCCASIONAE

Bare feet, Amazons in ancient Greek art were usually modestly dressed compared to their male opponents. Greek heroes typically fought in a “costume of heroic nudity” against clothed Amazons. An Amazon’s garment often left one breast exposed or slipped off her shoulder in the frenzy of battle. Despite the sex appeal of the warrior women’s lithe bodies in action, however, it is a challenge to find any scantily clad or naked Amazons in archaic and classical sculpture and painting.

Some unclothed Amazons do appear in later Hellenistic art, after the death of Alexander in 323 BC and into the Roman era. For example, a nude Achilles supports a nude Penthesilea on a sculpted relief on a Roman temple of the first century AD at Aphrodisias (Turkey), a scene copied on a fourth-century AD sarcophagus (fig. 18.4). Privately owned erotic art is another story. There are hints that pornographic paintings of naked Amazons were commissioned by connoisseurs in classical antiquity. Parrhasius, the celebrated trompe l’oeil artist of fifth-century Athens, enjoyed making highly realistic obscene paintings of mythic subjects for special customers. One of his works featured the Greek “Amazon” Atalanta “pleasuring Meleager with her lips.” That painting was last seen hanging in the emperor Tiberius’s bedchamber in the first century AD. Similar erotic scenes featuring Amazons may well have been painted by Parrhasius and other classical artists for private owners, although none exist today.1

Rare scenes of nude Amazons from classical antiquity survive on two sixth-century BC vases, one from Athens and one from Corinth, and on an Etruscan painted tomb of about 400 BC.