DEPTH of DIMENSION

Among the ancient figurines of prehistory is the Venus of Willendorf, a four-and-a-half-inch limestone carving with enlarged breasts, stomach and thighs.

- JOHN O'HERN

Carved about 25,000 years ago, it was discovered in 1908 at a time when it was automatically assumed the figure and others like it were carved by men. Later interpretations suggest the figures may have been carved by women who, looking down at themselves, would see their breasts foreshortened and large. Their purpose remains unknown and Paleolithic people's understanding of female fecundity and beauty is a mystery as well. Since the people at the time had no concept of the Roman goddess, Venus, who would be first mentioned over 22,000 years later, some scholars refer to her as the Woman of Willendorf.

Shortly before the sculpture's discovery, the presentation of the ethereal female was a pursuit in the work of the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907). Amor Caritas (Love [and] Charity] was first modeled in 1880 for an unrealized tomb commission. Versions of the sculpture are in museums around the world. The version in the Atrium of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire, the artist's home, was cast in bronze from a plaster version in the collection of the artist's son, Homer, and was discovered in 1940. In 1975, it was gilded in the manner of his Diana of the Tower that once graced the top of the original Madison Square Garden and the ensemble of William Tecumseh Sherman and Victory in front of the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Although representing the eternal ideals of the human capacity to express love and charity, the sculpture attained an historical presence with the face being modeled after the artist's mistress and favorite model, Davida Johnson Clark, whose face also graced Diana.

Gods and goddesses, especially those of ancient Greece and Rome, have been the subject for sculptors for hundreds of years. History is full, however, of lesser-known but equally powerful deities.