Exercise: Annotatate a classical sculpture, Part 4, Project 3 - Aphrodite Crouching/Lely's Venus

The sculpture I have chosen for this exercise is one I have come to know well over the last few weeks, as I have attempted to draw it on two separate occasions (below right); both times made  difficult by the volume of tourist traffic in the more popular rooms of the British Museum. It is a beautiful piece, and well worth the interruptions and comments.

My pencil sketch done at British Museum

Lely's Venus, Roman,2nd Century BC

 Praxiteles' Knidian Venus,copy.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the naked and semi-naked Aphrodite/Venus as a mainstream subject of sculpture and painting in Western art. There are many variants,  of which the naked crouching Aphrodite is only one, but the attribution of the original subject is without question the Greek sculptor, Praxiteles. Praxiteles, as the first ever to show the Goddess completely naked, created a scandal by going against the social mores of Greek society and the sculptural traditions of the day which only allowed male sculptures to be shown naked. Not only was she naked, but she was doing something that every mortal did - bathing. This act of doing the commonplace brought her down from the Gods to a level where people could relate to her and she became more approachable. Placed in a shrine in her temple at Knidos in south-western Turkey, the Knidian Venus statue was later stolen, ending up in Constantinople where it is thought to have been destroyed in the fire of 476 AD. He defined the ideal which would influence how the female body would be depicted by artists for centuries afterwards, from the Romans to the Renaissance masters. The ancient writers Pliny and Lucian both describe in detail how the statue could evoke lust in her viewers, and the lengths they would go to see her from all directions; particularly admiring her soft flesh, her expression, her pose. 

Lely's Venus, as it is sometimes known, takes its name from the painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-80), who owned the sculpture after acquiring it from the collection of Charles I before the King's execution in 1649. After Lely died, it found its way back into the Royal Collection. The sculpture had previously been in the collection of the Gonzaga family in Mantua (northern Italy) for several hundred years, and was there in 1600 when Peter Paul Rubens first visited Italy. Rubens was so impressed by the artwork he encountered that he defined the style of the voluptuous nude in his paintings for years to come.  It came to England after being purchased from the Gonzagas in 1627 for Charles I, an avid collector of artworks.

It is a sensual sculpture, the sculptor's ideal of what the perfect (human form) female body of the Goddess Aphrodite might look like in the nude, made between the the 2nd and 1st century BC in the Antonine period of the Roman Empire by Doidalsas of Bithynia, after the original by the innovative sculptor Praxiteles. Often, the crouching Venus-type statue was placed around a pool so that her reflection could be seen in the water.  

Ionian Aphrodite

 
Earliest Greek sculptures of Aphrodite are thought to have been based on the Hindu Goddess Laxmi, and were much more modest, celebrating her role as the patroness of natural growth. As shown in a copy of an Ionian sculpture (right), approximately 6th Century BC,Aphrodite was depicted wearing a close-fitting chitton and long robe, holding a dove/fruit or flower - all symbols of mating and fertility (Museum of Lyon).

Nude depictions of Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) inspired slavish following and were a critical development in Classical sculpture, which reflected the rising social status of women and changing attitudes towards them in Ancient Greek and Roman society. So famous did the Aphrodite of Knidos become, in fact, that she inspired generations of artists across the ancient world to make copies. Statue after statue of Aphrodite was produced, which mimicked or played with the stance and position of the Knidian Aphrodite, and thus her sexual ambiguity.  Sculptors who succeeded Praxiteles created more and more sexual and erotic statues, teasing the viewer and opening debate as to whether she was modestly trying to shield herself or inviting attention. It is the Greeks and the Romans we have to thank for defining beauty in women in a way that would influence artists for centuries.

 

Venus of Rhodes

The crouching Venus pose, already popular with the Greeks, became even more popular with the Romans, with her sexuality emphasized more as time went on. Greek mythology states that Aphrodite was born of the sea, and she was often depicted with wet hair. The variant (left) shows Aphrodite wringing out her wet hair and not attempting to cover herself. This association with water inspired 18th century garden designers to include Venus in many of their most ambitious projects.

Lely's Venus, in particular, has had a direct effect on many artists over the last several hundred years and almost certainly inspired Marcantonio Raimondi in his engraving of Crouching Venus in 1505-6 (below right), Rubens in his Allegory of 1612-13 (below left) and the Irish painter, Adam Buck, in his watercolour landscape (below centre).

Marcantonio Raimondi 1505-6

"Allegory" (1612-13) by Peter Paul Rubens

Adam Buck (1759-1833) Man and Woman Admiring Venus

References:

Beard, M. and Henderson J., 2001. Classical Art: from Greece to Rome, Oxford Uni. Press

Gersht, R., Aquatic Figure Types from Caesarea-Maritima, Department of Art History, Tel 

                    Aviv University (available at: http://www5.tau.ac.il/arts/departments/images

                   /stories/journals/arthistory/Assaph6/03gersht.pdf )

Havelock, C. H., 1995,The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of 

                   the Female Nude in Greek Art, Ann Arbor

Honour, H. and Fleming, J., 7th Edition, 2009, A world History of Art, Laurence King, 

                  Publishing Ltd, London

Morford, M.,Lenardson, R., Sham, M., 9th edition, Classical Mythology, Oxford Uni. Press

 

https://www.britishmuseum.org

http://www.fischerarthistory.com/aphroditevenus.html

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai 

           /aphrodite.html