The Berlin Dancer Completed: A Bronze Auletris in Santa Barbara

Abstract

Since the acquisition of the so-called "Berline Dancer" in 1874, the statue type which she represents has been the object of considerable scholarly debate. To date, a total of seven marble replicas have come to light. All of them are fragmentary and opinion has remained divided as to the composition, subject, and date of the lost original. Unlike these marbles, a Roman bronze statuette of the same type in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is well preserved, retaining its feet, arms, hands, and head; it thus extends our knowledge of the type considerably. The position of the arms and hands clearly indicates that Schober and others were correct in reconstructing the figure with a pair of auloi (double pipes) rather than another musical instrument or mythological attribute. The overall composition of the type, now seen complete, abandons the "relief-like" construction of early and high Classical free-standing sculpture through the emphatic spiral movement of a single corkscrew twist. As she offers the viewer no single satisfactory viewpoint, the auletris entices him to shift his position and circle her, whereby an everchanging composition is revealed. Although often attributed to the Hellenistic or even Roman period, this statue type is a masterly synthesis, rather than pastiche, of compositional elements present in a number of works of the fourth century B.C., suggesting a late fourth-century date for the original. The date and the certain identification of the figure as an auletris lend support to the association of the type by many scholars with the temulenta tibicina of Lysippos (Pliny, HN 34.63).