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

Sometimes a caryatid has been compared to the unseen slave who carried society’s burdens.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2023

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

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

Four huge totem poles, or ponderous carvings, supported the heavy beams of the roof in the manner of caryatides.

From Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska by Charles Warren Stoddard

A president could hardly have given more thought to selecting his cabinet than Persis gave to the choice of her bridesmaids, those lieutenants who must stand by in the same uniform like moving caryatides.

From What Will People Say? A novel by Rupert Hughes

Louis xiv. had gold-embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. 

From A Critic in Pall Mall Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies by Oscar Wilde

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

Jean Goujon himself has left his brilliant souvenirs on all sides, caryatides, festoons, bas-reliefs, statues and colonnades.

From Royal Palaces and Parks of France by Blanche McManus

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

Their eccentric profile, isolated against white, forms a kind of muscular torso, not unlike Matisse’s 1909 “Bather,” striding through water, or one of Modigliani’s caryatids.

From New York Times ● Mar. 19, 2020

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

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

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood