Hebe

An elegant and balanced pose, her robe draped carefully in soft folds, face and limbs without a blemish — it is the embodiment of youth and grace that the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen shows us here. Hebe, daughter of Zeus, goddess of youth, appears with pitcher and bowl in her role as cupbearer at the table of the Olympian gods. This idealised depiction in smoothly polished marble is both in keeping with the subject of the work and also characteristic of the classicism that Thorvaldsen’s works exemplify.