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

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

He paused in the sea of green moonlight before the gold threshold of the Palais du Danse, whose caryatides were faun-eyed Mænads and Ægipans.

From Just Around the Corner Romance en casserole by Fannie Hurst

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

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

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

A dozen caryatids - sculpted female figures which had helped support one of the building's domed roofs - were carefully lowered.

From BBC ● Jan. 27, 2016

Small kids were perched on tabletops because there weren't enough chairs, and the Epiphany sixth graders stood like caryatids leaning against three of the four walls of the room.

From "The View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg