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

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

And there's Salma Hayek in her clinking lavender gown, gliding through like a Technicolor caryatid.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 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

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

It has moreover the rare and distinctive feature of what is known as a caryatid porch, that is to say, one in which the entablature is upheld by caryatides or statues representing female figures.

From Architecture by Nancy R E Meugens Bell

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

First examine the caryatides who support the central structure.

From Studies in Central American Picture-Writing First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 205-245 by Edward Singleton Holden

It is from imperfect views of this, that the meaning and effect of caryatides have been mistaken: instead of being oppressed by weight, they seem, when well employed, to have no weight to support.

From Beauty Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman by Alexander Walker

A critic of the day hailed the bravura Hunt caryatids as “full of sentiment, showing a refined imagination, a scholar’s grasp of the requirements and an artist’s appreciation of fitness.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 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