Aphrodite in Art
The oldest assured statues of Venus, of an all-nourishing mother goddess, are perhaps the little figurines frequently found in Mesopotamia representing “the Lady” or Beltis (the feminine of Bel, “the Lord”) in the shape of a naked woman, sometimes with a child in her arms; but we may fairly well assume that even the artists of the stone age took up this all-absorbing subject, and if this be the case we may be justified in calling the torso of a naked female figure discovered in Brassempouy, a Venus,—so far the oldest Venus that has come down to us.
In India the goddess of beauty was revered under the name of Lakshmi, and we need not doubt that she still finds worshipers among the Hindu population of to-day, but there are no statues left of the age of ancient Brahmanism. All monuments are of comparatively late origin; in fact the large mass of Hindu idols is quite modern, although it represents art and religious notions of a typically primitive character.
Another and, as it seems, independent development can be traced from the worship of stone pillars or bethels. A bethel, i. e., “house of God,” well known from the Bible as a monument of divine revelation, developed gradually into the representation of a stiff female figure like the Diana of Ephesus, but we cannot doubt that the primitive idea of it was the worship of an all-nourishing mother. From her the Greek conception of the chaste moon goddess, the virgin Artemis or Diana, developed in course of time; but the Diana of Ephesus still preserves symbols of a pantheistic conception of the All under the allegory of a mother goddess. (For illustrations see pages 152 and 153.)
Among the Semites the oldest bethels, or houses of God, were pillars of stone. We need not assume that they were gods or goddesses, for judging from Biblical information they may be interpreted as monuments marking a holy place, i. e., a spot where a deity had revealed himself in some way.
The primitive form of a bethel,39 or as the Greeks transcribed the Phenician term, βαίτυλος, has often been represented on coins. Sometimes two columns are placed, one on each side, and the stone is frequently accompanied with the symbols of the goddess, fruit and eggs; sometimes doves perch on the sanctuary; sometimes the pillar is covered with a temple roof. We know one instance in which it bears the symbol of a Latin cross and gradually it assumes in a coarse style the features of a woman. Such is the beginning of the manufacture of idols which at first are extremely stiff and assume only gradually—indeed very slowly—an artistic shape.
At the dawn of the historic age the oldest Greek statues and paintings of Venus show her fully robed and draped. Great numbers of Aphrodite amulets of small size and made of glazed terra-cotta have been found mainly on the Ægean islands where her cult had spread from Babylon and Syria. They resemble the Babylonian Beltis statuettes in having the arms crossed over the breast, but as a rule their hips are unnaturally broad. Some of them have a bird’s (possibly a pigeon’s) head and all have large ears with earrings.
The very oldest real statues of Aphrodite, products of primitive manufacture, have been lost, and none of the temple idols have survived Christian iconoclasm, but we have information that Kanachus40 in the sixth century before Christ, and Kalamis, Phidias and Alcamenes in the fifth, have represented the goddess as dignified and severe. We reproduce here drawings of archaic statues fully dressed. Some of them are still awkward but give evidence of the artist’s reverence. An archaic Venus of the style familiar in Pompeii was formerly regarded as a Moera but to-day after Gerhard’s interpretation it is considered as a Venus Proserpina.
The statue by Kalamis which once stood upon the Acropolis at Athens and was called Aphrodite Sosandra42 is also fully dressed, but much more graceful. A veil is tied about her hair, and in her right hand the goddess is clasping some folds of her upper garment, while her extended left hand holds a pomegranate blossom.
Among the Attic votive reliefs there is one interpreted as Aphrodite and Ares,43 which shows
Aphrodite unveiling her face to Ares. She holds a pitcher in her right hand and is pouring its contents into a vessel in his hands. It is also to be noted that the action takes place above an empty altar. The child behind her in this connection can only represent her son Eros.
In the National Museum at Rome there is an Attic sculpture of the fifth century which is somewhat bolder in showing the outlines of the figure. This Aphrodite is clad in a very diaphanous garment, the left breast being quite uncovered.
In the beautiful statue by Alcamenes, a copy of which is still preserved in the Louvre, the dress seems to be of slightly heavier texture and the posture more simple and dignified. In her left hand the goddess holds a pomegranate and is lifting with her right hand a corner of her drapery above her right shoulder.
It was in the days of the highest development of Greek art that the greatest artists dared to show the goddess of love in perfect nudity. The statues of Phidias still retain the severe expression of her divine character, but Praxiteles endeavors to show her beauty as in primitive times without any dress, in a careless but graceful and artistic pose. So at least appears the most authoritative record of her appearance on the Cnidian coin. Other statues, especially the Vatican marble known as the Venus of Praxiteles, are partly dressed. It is assumed that many replicas of ancient masterpieces did not follow their originals in all details.
This statue of Praxiteles was ordered by the Cnidians from the artist for public worship, and when finished they placed it in the temple of Aphrodite Euploia built especially to serve as a shrine for this piece of art. The goddess was the patroness of the island of Cnidos and therefore her image was impressed upon the Cnidian coins as the great artist had depicted her. The best copies of the Cnidian
Aphrodite are preserved in the Vatican and in the Glyptothek at Munich.
The Vatican is rich in Venus statues of a similar type which have been worked out in the spirit of Praxiteles, and we here reproduce photographs of what has been called the crouching Venus and also the Venus with the unguent jar.
These statues of Aphrodite in the Vatican and most others produced in the latter portion of the classical period of Greek art are entirely nude, but with the exception of the very latest ones we must grant that they are endowed with divine dignity. An improper feature enters only when nudity betrays either an intentional display, with a pretense of prudery, or an obvious purpose to excite sensuality. Originally these features are foreign to the Greek goddess and develop only with the decay of Hellenic civilization. They appear obtrusively in the so-called Venus of Medici, and worse still in the so-called Venus Kalypygos, in this way justifying to some extent the harsh opinion of Christian pietists who have vitiated our notion of Greek deities down to the present day. From the standpoint here taken I may be permitted to omit entirely any reproduction of pictures of this latest phase of the artistic conception of Venus.
Among the portrayals of Venus we deem two recent discoveries worthy of reproduction on account of their sweetness and gracefulness. One is the Venus of Panderma and the other a bust found in a wrecked ship by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea off the African coast in the Mediterranean. The former was found in a shipwreck near the coast of Panderma in the year 1884, together with coins of the time of Lysimachos. It is made of Parian marble and shows the goddess standing near a small pillar over which her garment is hung. She is represented at the moment when her hands are tying a long ribbon around her head to hold up her curly hair which falls back behind the ears. Furtwängler and Salomon Reinach have devoted much attention to the statue, the latter in his Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, and both praise highly the beauty of the goddess.
The head of the goddess Venus now preserved in the museum at Bardos near Tunis must have lain hidden for over two thousand years. It had probably been ordered by lovers of art living in Africa and never reached its place of destination. The shells which cover part of the bust have happily not attacked the features of the goddess and so the beauty of the face is left unmarred.