![]() For a time in 1969, the archaeologist Iris Love thought she had found the only surviving fragments of the original statue, which are now in storage at the British Museum. It was one of the most widely copied statues in the ancient world, so a general idea of the appearance of the statue can be gleaned from the descriptions and replicas that have survived to the modern day. Possibly the statue was removed to Constantinople (modern Istanbul), where it was housed in the Palace of Lausus in 475, the palace burned and the statue was lost. Under the welcome shade of the boughs, comfortable beds await the celebrants-actually the better people of the town only rarely frequent these green halls, but the common crowds jostle there on festive days, to yield publicly to the joys of love. Heavy clusters of grapes hang from the gnarled vines: indeed, Aphrodite is only more attractive when united with Bacchus their pleasures are sweeter for being mixed together. Ivies entwine themselves lovingly around each of these trees. Such were the cypress and the planes which towered to the heavens, as well as the tree of Daphnis, who once fled Aphrodite but now has come here to seek refuge. To tell the truth, you can notice among them some infertile trees, but they have beauty as their fruit. They never know foliage grown old, their boughs always being thick with leaves. The myrtle, beloved by the goddess, reached up its berry-laden branches no less than the other trees which so gracefully stretched out. ![]() The floor of the court had not been doomed to sterility by a stone pavement, but on the contrary, it burst with fertility, as behooves Aphrodite: fruit trees with verdant foliage rose to prodigious heights, their limbs weaving a lofty vault. This story is recorded in the dialogue Erotes (section 15), traditionally attributed to Lucian of Samosata, which offers the fullest literary description of the temenos of Aphrodite at Knidos. An attendant priestess told visitors that upon being discovered, he was so ashamed that he hurled himself over a cliff near the edge of the temple. The statue would have been polychromed, and was so lifelike that it even aroused men sexually, as witnessed by the tradition that a young man broke into the temple at night and attempted to copulate with the statue, leaving a stain on it. Nicomedes I of Bithynia offered to pay off the enormous debts of the city of Knidos in exchange for the statue, but the Knidians rejected his offer. The statue became a tourist attraction in spite of being a cult image, and a patron of the Knidians. Pliny claims that it brought fame to Knidos and coins issued there depicting the statue seem to confirm this. The city of Kos purchased the draped statue, because they felt the nude version was indecent and reflected poorly on their city, while the city of Knidos purchased the nude statue. According to an account by Pliny the Elder, Praxiteles sculpted both a nude and a draped statue of Aphrodite. A Roman copy, it is not thought to match the polished beauty of the original, which was destroyed in a disastrous fire at Constantinople in 475. The Aphrodite of Knidos established a canon for the proportions of the female nude, and inspired many copies, the best of which is considered to be the Colonna Knidia in the Vatican's Pio-Clementine Museum. Overwhelming evidence from aggregations suggests that the Knidian sculpture was meant to evoke male responses of sexuality upon viewing the statue, which were said to have been encouraged by the temple staff. When making the Aphrodite of Knidos, Spivey argues that her iconography can be attributed to Praxiteles creating the statue for the intent of being viewed by male onlookers. Previously nudity was a heroic uniform assigned only to men. The female nude appeared nearly three centuries after the earliest nude male counterparts in Greek sculpture, the kouros the female kore figures were clothed. Lucian said that she "wore a slight smile that just revealed her teeth", although most later copies do not preserve this. The statue is famed for its beauty, and is designed to be appreciated from every angle.īecause the various copies show different body shapes, poses and accessories, the original can only be described in general terms the body twisting in a contrapposto position, with the head probably turned to the left. The placement of her hands obscures her pubic area, while simultaneously drawing attention to her exposed upper body. It depicted the goddess Aphrodite as she prepared for the ritual bath that restored her purity, discarding her drapery with one hand, while modestly shielding herself with the other. The Aphrodite of Knidos was commissioned as the cult statue for the Temple of Aphrodite at Knidos.
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