caryatid

The single square column features crouching figures in the capital who seem to be holding up the arch, a playful evocation of the classical figure of the caryatid or herm.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 21, 2026

In ancient Greece, the culture where male athletes were so highly prized as heroic citizens, a caryatid was a draped female figure used instead of a column as an architectural support.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2023

Although their name was an architectural inside joke — a caryatid is a type of Greek column that is also a statue of the female likeness — their guileful display took on some serious issues.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2018

You may think that David Cameron's well-heeled colleagues would give him a marble caryatid bought from the Frieze Masters art fair for his birthday.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 12, 2012

“A caryatid wouldn’t be strong enough for Dad.”

From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

The fair form, beneath which all his ideals of beauty stood only as heraldic bearers and caryatides, was even colder than at the reception, and persisted in being only the echo of the parental courtesy.

From Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Vol. I. A Biography by Jean Paul

But such sustaining power, so applied, is like figures of caryatides supporting some poor decadent frieze.

From The Galaxy, June 1877 Vol. XXIII.—June, 1877.—No. 6. by Various

We can still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the pavilion of the Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at once so majestic and so graceful, which are detached with admirable relief and lightness.

From Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good by Victor Cousin

These pulpits are supported by caryatides representing the Evangelists and four doctors of the Church.

From Cathedral Cities of Italy by William Wiehe Collins

They corresponded to the four gods Bacab, who in the Yucatecan mythology were supposed to stand one at each corner of the world, supporting, like gigantic caryatides, the overhanging firmament.

From The Myths of the New World A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America by Daniel Garrison Brinton

Brought together from three separate museum collections, they are lined up in a row, Modernist caryatids of a farewell portal.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026

In it, she and Cardi B dress in Grecian goddess-inspired dresses, dance in front of classically inspired statuary, wear headdresses that evoke caryatids and transform into Grecian vases.

From Salon ● Sep. 4, 2021

He sat in a ostentatious Greek-style hall bedecked with four caryatids, the draped female figures used in columns — a style first seen in Delphi 2 ½ millennia ago.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 12, 2019

He called them the "caryatids of that great and marvellous epoch that was ours".

From BBC ● Feb. 24, 2016

These marble women are called caryatids, which orginally referred to the priestesses of Artemis at Caryae.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood