Aphrodite Of Knidos Essay

Researching the statues of antiquity can be especially daunting; time and nature have a way of (quite literally) wearing away at things. Often art pieces are destroyed, pilfered, or their archaeological sites foolishly man-handled, not to mention the ravishes of the weather. There are gaps of missing information from one era to the next, and as much as we may wish for it, no Archaeologist has ever found a didactic panel sitting neatly next to an excavated work. We are lucky when studying the statue of Aphrodite of Knidos (c.350 BCE) however, because while the original was lost to the ages, she was widely copied, several versions of her are still in existence, and there are historical writings that directly reference the statue and her creator, Praxiteles. Often carved of
The statue embodies a stark femininity, with its sensuous curvilinear shapes, rounded shoulders, displaying a sinuous and relaxed posture. She has a direct, outward-looking gaze; the subject is very aware of her viewers. As the goddess of beauty and love she would be well acquainted with her follower’s adorations. The Aphrodite is regularly depicted with her right hand lowered over her pubic area and holding draped cloth with the other. Considering the source material, most likely this was a gesture to indicate fertility and not, as modern Western cultures would assume, a signal of modesty. The Aphrodite of Knidos is widely regarded as the first popular female nude depicted in Greek art, breaking with the societal conventions of that time which may have led to her rediscovery during the late Hellenistic period when replicas were being created en masse. The iterations of Aphrodite of Knidos were as varied as they were numerous, portraying the goddess of love while “standing, kneeling, crouching, bending, and turning”. The mass reproduction of one of Praxiteles most famous works is testimony to the lasting impression his representation of a deity made on those that viewed it during its