Kouros represents youth, moral and physical beauty of the aristocratic culture of Archaic Greece. On the other hand, Aphrodite represents the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Kouros is a life-sized sculpture and hands clenched at the sides and one foot slightly forward. In contrast, Aphrodite is given larger than real-life scale.…
Walking through LACMA there was a section that caught my eye and found it to be of interest to me. That section was the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Art which was located on the Ahmanson Building, Level 3. There were various unique pieces such as vases, jewelry and sculptures. I chose the sculpture of Hope Athena to do my visual analysis because I found it to be beautiful. Athena was a Greek goddess of wisdom and war. The sculpture at LACMA is a Roman, 2nd century copy after a Greek original of the late 5th century BC School of Pheidias. The sculpture was made out of marble with neutral colors. In parts the color was dull with hues of ivory and golden brown. The shape of the body was rectangular with broad shoulders. The sculpture had her arms missing. Her head was round with hair coming down in vertical waves. She was wearing a warrior helmet from my view point I could not tell what the helmet had on it. The helmet gave her a powerful look. Her facial expression seemed reflective with facial features being symmetrical and smooth. The eye sockets were hollow and dark. Her nose was chipped and her upper and lower lips were thin. One of the focal points for me was how her robe or drapery had such detail throughout the sculpture. It wrapped around her body with great detail with vertical creases and folds giving the sculpture a realistic look. The vertical lines toward the bottom of robe had great detail and were distributed equally and her feet and toes…
The first one I’m going to be talking about is called “Statue of Venus (the Mazarin Venus),” the artist is unknown; it’s located in Rome, Italy and dated on A.D. 100-200. Its size is human size approximation 6’ 3” high. The texture looked smooth, but with some toughness, its color to me looked beige, the shape is of a woman holding a blanket or towel to cover herself by her side she has a dolphin and the medium is made of marble. Some information I found of this statue is that her name is “Aphrodite” (Venus), the daughter of Zeus and Dione. “She is the goddess of love and beauty. In one version of her myth, she was born from the foam (aphros in Greek) of the sea” (107). “Venus, the goddess of love, stands nude, grasping a piece of cloth around her hips. The dolphin at her feet supports the figure and alludes to the goddess’s birth from the sea” (Getty Museum). The period of the statue is a Roman. “It was discovered in Rome, where it contributed to the Renaissance revival of the Classical tradition” (Getty Museum). The geographical origin is in Rome. “For the Romans, Venus (Aphrodite to the Greeks) played an important role in the epic tales of the Trojan…
By what more common name do we know the Aphrodite of Melos? Venus de Milo…
The harsh lighting expels midtowns and shallow depth which emphasizes her nudity. The painting is supposedly modeled after Titans, Venus of Urbino, however, I consider it to be a mockery of Titans work. Titan presents a goddess while Manet presents a prostitute. Unlike Titan’s Venus, whose left hand entices the viewer and politely covers her genitals, Olympia’s left hand obstructs as if she was forcibly doing so. This is an interpretation of how she is not reliant on men. Manet also replaces the dog with a black cat which is another symbolization of prostitution. On another note, the size of this work is quite large for this sort of painting. Paintings at this stature should be portraying historical events, not what I see before me. In conclusion, this work should not be displayed in a gallery such as the…
References: Aphrodite de Milos (Venus De Milo). [Greek Sculpture]. (2007). Retrieved February 18, 2010, from…
procession. There is even disagreement as to whether Venus is depicted at all. The woman in the…
In the attempts to illustrate how Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos changed the nature of subsequent depictions of the goddess, further Roman replicas of Aphrodite statues will be compared to the Aphrodite of Knidos. These include Aphrodite (Venus dei Medici- Figure 2) and Aphrodite from Rhodes (Crouching Aphrodite) (Figure 3), in which parallels will be drawn to the Aphrodite at Knidos for stylistic similarities, portrayals of the goddess, and postures.…
It is 85.24 cm long bronze statue. This statue is of a mythological god, Eros. Eros is the Greek god of love and sexual desire. He was also worshiped as a fertility god. This statue depicts Eros as a baby. The figure is in an exhausted and relaxing, reclining poses. The figure has pudgy limbs and curly hair. Unlike the “Seated statue of Gudea”, it has naturalistic detail. Which makes it realistic, and humanized besides the fact of it having wings on its back. According to the descriptions at the Metropolitan Museum, this statue in the Roman period served a purposed of decoration in the villa gardens and fountains. Its function in the Hellenistic period isn’t clear but possibly have been used as dedications within a sanctuary of Aphrodite or possibly erected in a public park or private, even royal,…
In 1908, archaeologist Josef Szombathy’s workman Josef Veram uncovered the figure that has come to be known as the Venus of Willendorf. Found at a Paleolithic dig site in Willendorf, Austria, the Venus of Willendorf is a small limestone figure of a women. 53 years later, in Çatalhöyük, Turkey James Mellaart dug up the Seated Mother Goddess, or Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük. This figure was also clearly a women, but it was larger, and made out of clay as compared to the Venus of Willendorf. Though they came from very different parts of the world, historians soon recognized the striking similarities between the two figures. Despite the differences between where they were found, and the time periods they came from, the two figures had undeniable similarities. Both had largely defined…
The Roman goddess Venus is the goddess of love and beauty. She's known to have come from the sea, but is the daughter of Jupiter and Dione. Venus was by far the most beautiful of all of the gods, so it's said that Jupiter married her off to Vulcan, the lame and ugly smith god. Vulcan used his skills to make her lavish gifts, that only made her more irresistible to the other gods. Her attributes were said to be the dove, the swan, the pomegranate and the lime tree. With her comes beauty and love, and without her there is no happiness or good things. In Homer's Iliad, Venus (Aphrodite) is portrayed as a meek and docile god, but in later poems she's shown as a force to be reckoned with, with her powerful persuasion over men. Venus usually got what she wanted through the power of her beauty, love, and seduction. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite is known as a central figure in the Trojan war. The story begins with the competition between Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, over a golden apple. (the fruit of temptation) The golden apple was supposed to be given to the fairest of the gods, and since Zeus couldn't choose between the three goddess, he gave the responsibility to the Trojan Prince Paris. While Hera and Athena bribed the prince with power and glory, Aphrodite offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. The deal caused Aphrodite to be reigned the fairest, but it also was the cause of the Trojan war.…
The Venus of Willendorf is one of the oldest and most famous early images of a human. She represents what use to be the “ideal woman” with her curvy figure and the emphasis on fertility seen in the features of her sculpted body. This paper will analyze the Venus of Willendorf sculpture in terms of its formal analysis.…
Botticelli is one of the most famous artists during the Italian Renaissance. He was very well know for the portrayal of the female figure and his ability to incorporate femininity as a symbol of life itself and/or nature illustrated by the changes of seasons. Botticelli most famous figure was that of Venus, the goddess of love. She was incorporated into two of his most famous works, The Birth of Venus and Primavera. Most of Botticelli's women had that typical hourglass figure to them . During the time period in which these works were created, women with the physical characteristics of Venus were considered to be the ideal feminine figure. These women were considered to be ideal because during this era, flesh was a symbol of health, wealth, and stability ("Sandro ", 1). Women of this built were obviously healthy because this showed that they ate well and were thus financially secure. Thin women on the other hand were viewed as being poor and thus underfed and unhealthy due to lack of funds and hard labor. Also, men viewed Venus (especially her wide hips) to be the perfect figure, because they saw that type of figure to be designed especially for the purposes of child bearing (Turner 151). Venus, the goddess of love, is illustrated in Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, as the ultimate glorification of the female figure, because this painting depicts the beginning of all beginnings, which is the birth of the goddess of love herself. It depicts this image because she is drawn as a "pure" person, not knowing much about what is happening. Botticelli does not show any signs of disrespect towards women. In fact in this painting, even though the goddess is Rizzo 2 nude, he depicts her in such a fashion that shows she has self-confidence and lack of embarrassment. The arm that covers her breasts and the log hair covering the genitals is how she is preventing herself from being "exposed" and essentially how he maintains her modesty (Dempsey, 35). Botticelli also…
It is a historical piece during a time in which a nude sculpture of a woman was unknown. In particular, I do not find this sculpture to be pleasing in a sensual perspective. Even though the sculpture is indeed a bit sensual, I find the sculpture to portray the charms of Aphrodite as a goddess of love and beauty. I do not find this sculpture to be explicit as Aphrodite is not illustrated in such a manner.…
Pygmalion was a fabulous king of Cyprus, fell in love with the mess it created…