Interpreting the Visual Evidence
Reconstructing an Ideal of Female Beauty
The lost statue known
as the Aphrodite of
Knidos was considered
the most beautiful in
the ancient world, but
we can only study it by looking at later
copies. It was the work of the fourth
century's most renowned sculptor, Praxiteles
(prak-SIT-el-ezz), who was reputed
to have modeled it after the Athenian
courtesan known as Phryne, a renowned
beauty who inspired several contemporary
artists and a whole series of apocryphal
stories. The most reliable of these
concerns the riches she accrued: apparently
she became so wealthy that she offered
to finance the rebuilding of Thebes
in 336on the condition that the slogan
"destroyed by Alexander, restored by
Phryne the Courtesan" be prominently
displayed on the new walls. (Her offer
was rejected.)
Praxiteles' original statue is thought
to have been the first monumental female
nude fashioned in antiquity. According
to one authority, Praxiteles had
initially received a commission from the
island of Kos, for which he fashioned
both clothed and naked versions of Aphrodite.
Apparently, the scandalized citizens
approved only the draped version
and refused to pay for the nude. It was
purchased instead by the city of Knidos
on Cyprus, where it was displayed in an
open-air temple so that it could be seen
from all sides. It quickly became a tourist
attraction and was widely copied and
emulated. Two of the more faithful replicas,
made by artists working in Rome,
are pictured here.
Images
Questions for Analysis
1. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d As we have seen, the male nude was a
favorite subject of Greek artists from
the Archaic Period onward. Based
on your knowledge of contemporary
Greek culture and society, why was it
only in the fourth century b.c.e. that a
life-size female nude could be publicly
displayed? Are there any precedents
for statues like this? |
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2. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Compare and contrast the ideal of female
beauty suggested by the Knidian
Aphrodite with the male ideals discussed
in Chapter 3. What can you
conclude about the relationship between
these ideals and the different expectations
of male and female behavior
in Greek society? Why, for example,
would ancient sources insist that the
model for this statue was a courtesan? |
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3. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d Among the Romans, a statue like the
Knidian Aphrodite was called a Venus
pudica, a “modest Venus” (image A).
Yet the citizens of Kos were allegedly
shocked by its indecency, while old
photographs of the copy in the Vatican
Museum (image B) show that it
was displayed until 1932 with additional
draperies made of tin. How do
you account for these very different
standards of decency? To what degree
do they suggest that concepts of
“be auty” or “modesty” are historically
constructed? |
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