Aphrodite of Knidos

Original

The Aphrodite of Knidos was a marble carving of the goddess Aphrodite by the sculptor Praxiteles, which was bought by the people of Knidos in the middle of the 4th century BC. The earliest text to mention the Aphrodite is Pliny the Elder's Natural History, which reports that Praxiteles carved two sculptures of Aphrodite, one clothed and one nude; the clothed one was bought by the people of Kos and the Knidians bought the nude one. The statue was set up as the cult statue for the Temple of Aphrodite at Knidos. It depicted the goddess Aphrodite as she prepared for the ritual bath that restored her purity, discarding her drapery with one hand, while modestly shielding herself with the other. The placement of her hands obscures her pubic area, while simultaneously drawing attention to her exposed upper body. The statue is famed for its beauty, and is designed to be appreciated from every angle.

Because the various copies show different body shapes, poses and accessories, the original can only be described in general terms. It depicted a nude woman, the body twisting in a contrapposto position, with its weight on the right foot. Most copies show Aphrodite covering her pubic area with her right hand, while the left holds drapery which, along with a vase, helps support the figure. In most copies of the sculpture, it is ambiguous whether the Aphrodite is picking up or putting down the drapery. Almost all copies show the head of the sculpture turning to the left. In most copies, the Aphrodite is adorned with some kind of jewellery; on large copies this usually includes an armband on the left arm.

The female nude appeared nearly three centuries after the earliest nude male counterparts in Greek sculpture, the kouros; the female kore figures were clothed. Previously nudity was a heroic uniform assigned only to men. When making the Aphrodite of Knidos, Spivey argues that her iconography can be attributed to Praxiteles creating the statue for the intent of being viewed by male onlookers. Overwhelming evidence from the ancient sources suggests that the Knidian sculpture evoked male responses of sexuality upon viewing the statue. The Aphrodite of Knidos established a canon for the proportions of the female nude.

According to Athenaeus and the late-antique rhetorician Choricius of Gaza, Praxiteles used the courtesan Phryne as the model for the Aphrodite, though Clement of Alexandria instead names the model as Cratina. The statue became so widely known and copied that in a humorous anecdote the goddess Aphrodite herself came to Knidos to see it. A lyric epigram of Antipater of Sidon places a hypothetical question on the lips of the goddess herself:

Paris, Adonis, and Anchises saw me naked, Those
are all I know of, but how did Praxiteles contrive it?

A similar epigram is attributed to Plato:

When Cypris saw Cypris at Cnidus, "Alas!" said she; "where did Praxiteles see me naked?"

— Plato, Epigram XVII

According to an epigram from Roman poet Ausonius, Praxiteles never saw what he was not meant to see, but instead sculpted Aphrodite as Ares would have wanted.

The original Aphrodite of Knidos is now lost. It was taken to Constantinople in the fourth century AD, and destroyed, either deliberately or in the fire that destroyed the Palace of Lausos in 476. It is known through its many surviving copies – Kristen Seaman has catalogued 192 surviving ancient copies, making the statue perhaps the most-copied sculpture from antiquity. In his 1933 monograph on the Aphrodite, Christian Blinkenberg argued that the Colonna Venus, in the Vatican's Pio-Clementine Museum, is the most accurate surviving copy; this view is still widely, though not universally, accepted.