Friné (Φρύνη) es el apodo (el significado de este sobrenombre, probablemente antifrástico, es ‘sapo’) de una famosa hetera griega célebre por su belleza, nacida en Tespias en el año 328 a. C. con el nombre Mnésareté (en griego antiguo Μνησαρετή Mnêsaretế, que significa ‘conmemoradora de la virtud’).

Retrato de ‘Afrodita, variante de la ‘Afrodita de Cnido de Praxitéles, conocida como la « Cabeza Kaufmann ». Marmol, periodo hellenístico (h. 150 a. J.-C.). Procedencia : Tralles, Turquía. La estatua correspondiente a la cabeza se conserva en Berlin . Se conocen también otros tipos de cabeza para la Afrodita de Cnido (ver por ejemplo Imagen :Aphrodite_head_Ma_421_Louvre.jpg).

H. 35 cm (13 ¾ in.)
Ubicación actual	[mostrar] (Inventory)Museo del Louvre Native name Musée du Louvre Location París Coordinates 48°51′37″N 2°20′15″E / 48.860395°N 2.337599°E / 48.860395; 2.337599 Established 1793(1793) Website www.louvre.fr
	Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities, Sully, ground floor, room 16
Número de inventario	Ma 3518
Adquisición	Purchase, 1951
Referencias	notice sur le site du Louvre
Origen/Fotógrafo	Eric Gaba (User:Sting), July 2005.

Era la amante y musa favorita delcélebre escultor Praxíteles, quien se inspiró en ella para la creación de varias esculturas de la diosa Afrodita.

Su nombre ha trascendido a la historia sobre todo por dos anécdotas en las que se vio envuelta.

La estatua de Eros y el ingenio de Friné

Praxíteles le ofreció a Friné como pago de sus servicios, la escultura que ella quisiera de las que él tenía en su estudio. Friné no sabía de arte y no se veía capaz de decidir cuál era su mejor pieza, así que urdió un plan. Dio instrucciones a un sirviente para que durante una cena, irrumpiera diciendo que el estudio estaba en llamas. Praxíteles exclamó: «¡Salvad mi Eros!». Así ella supo que aquella era la mejor obra y fue la que exigió acto seguido, obsequiándola luego a Tespias, su ciudad natal.

El juicio contra Friné

Es sin duda la razón por la que su nombre ha llegado hasta nuestros días.

Friné fue acusada de impiedad, un delito muy grave en Grecia (recuérdese que fue el delito por el que se sentenció a muerte a Sócrates), a causa de su continua comparación con la diosa Afrodita, comparación debida a su belleza.

The Ludovisi Cnidian Aphrodite, Roman marble copy (torso and thighs) with restored head, arms, legs and drapery

support

En efecto, Friné era la modelo de los escultores para representar a la diosa del amor, fertilidad y belleza femenina (se considera que la escultura llamada la Venus de Cnido es una representación de Friné). Otra de las graves acusaciones que sobre Friné pesaban era la de haber violado el secreto de los Misterios eleusinos.

Afrodita de Cnido,Wikipedia

Copia en mármol de la llamada Venus de Colonna de la Afrodita de Cnido tal como se exhibió en los siglos XIX y XX

Por petición de Praxíteles, durante el juicio fue defendida por el orador Hipérides.

Hipérides fue incapaz de convencer a los jueces con su discurso, así que, como último recurso, recurrió al amor (en griego: Eros, o acaso φιλíα) y a la belleza e hizo desnudarse a Friné ante los jueces, convenciéndoles de que no se podía privar al mundo de tal belleza, la cual era un monumento vivo a la diosa.

Con esta estrategia, consiguió conmover a los jueces, quienes la absolvieron de manera unánime.

LA AFRODITA DE CNIDO

According to a possibly apocryphal account by Pliny, Praxiteles received a commission from the citizens of Kos for a statue of the goddess Aphrodite. Praxiteles then created two versions—one fully draped, and the other completely nude. The shocked citizens of Kos rejected the nude statue and purchased the draped version. The design and appearance of the draped version is today unknown as it didn’t survive, nor did it appear to have merited attention, to judge from the lack of surviving accounts.

The rejected nude was purchased by some citizens of Knidos and set up in an open air temple that permitted viewing of the statue from all sides. It quickly became one of the most famous works by Praxiteles for the bold depiction of Aphrodite as proudly nude.

Engraving of a coin from Knidos showing the Aphrodite of Cnidus, by Praxiteles

Praxiteles was alleged to have used the courtesan Phryne as a model for the statue, which added to the gossip surrounding its origin. The statue became so widely known and copied that in a humorous anecdote the goddess Aphrodite herself came to Knidos to see it, and asked “Alas, where did Praxiteles see me naked?”

The statue became a tourist attraction in spite of being a cult image and patron of the Knidians. 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 tradition—apparently prompted by a stain in the marble on the rear of one thigh—that the statue was so lifelike that a young man secreted himself in the cella at night and attempted to copulate with it^[1] is recorded in the dialogue Erotes (section 15), traditionally misattributed to Lucian of Samosata. The dialogue offers the fullest literary description of the temenos of Aphrodite at Knidos:

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. The myrtle, beloved by the goddess, reached up its berry-laden branches no less than the other trees which so gracefully stretched out. They never know foliage grown old, their boughs always being thick with leaves. To tell the truth, you can notice among them some infertile trees, but they have beauty as their fruit. 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. Ivies entwine themselves lovingly around each of these trees. 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. Apart, they have less spice. 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. (Pseudo-Lucian, Erotes)

Of the Aphrodite herself, the narrator resorts to hyperbole:

When we had exhausted the charms of these places we pressed on into the temple itself. The goddess stands in the center; her statue made of marble from Paros. Her lips are slightly parted by a lofty smile. Nothing hides her beauty, which is entirely exposed, other than a furtive hand veiling her modesty. The art of the sculptor has succeeded so well that it seems the marble has shed its hardness to mold the grace of her limbs (Pseudo-Lucian, Erotes)

A lyric epigram of unknown authorship places a hypothetical question on the lips of the goddess herself:

Paris did see me naked,

Adonis, and Anchises,

except I knew all three of them.

Where did the sculptor see me?

Copies

The Knidian Aphrodite has not survived. Possibly the statue was removed to Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and was lost in a fire during the Nika riots. 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. 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. The prevailing opinion of archaeologists is that the fragment in question is not of the Knidia, but of a different statue.

The Kaufmann Head in the Musée du Louvre

• Probably the most faithful replica of the statue is the Colonna Venus conserved in the Museo Pio-Clementino, part of the collections of the Vatican Museums.

• The Kaufmann Head, found at Tralles, purchased from the C.M. Kaufmann collection, Berlin, and conserved in the Musée du Louvre, is thought to be a very faithful Roman reproduction of the head of the Knidian Aphrodite.^[2]

• At Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli in Italy, there is a second-century recreation of the temple at Knidos with a fragmentary replica of the Aphrodite standing at the center of it, generally matching descriptions in ancient accounts of how the original was displayed.

As well as more or less faithful copies, the Aphrodite of Cnidus also inspired various variations, which include:

• 1.the Capitoline Venus (Capitoline Museums, Rome)

-

Venus Capitolina, Roma

The Capitoline Venus is a type of statue of Venus, specifically one of several Venus Pudica (modest Venus) types (others include the Venus de’ Medici type), of which several examples exist. The type ultimately derives from the Aphrodite of Cnidus. The Capitoline Venus and her variants are recognisable from the position of the arms—standing after a bath, Venus begins to cover her breasts with her right hand, and her groin with her left hand.

This original of this type (from which the following copies derive) is thought to be a lost third or second century BCE variation on Praxiteles’ work from Asia Minor, which modifies the Praxitelean tradition by a carnal and voluptuous treatment of the subject and the goddess’s modest gesture with both hands—rather than only one over the groin, in Praxiteles’s original.

Principal example

The Capitoline Venus is a slightly over lifesize^[1] marble statue of Venus. It is an Antonine copy of a late Hellenistic sculpture that ultimately derives from Praxiteles (Helbig 1972:128-30).

It was found on the Viminal Hill during the pontificate of Clement X (1670-76) in the gardens belonging to the Stazi near San Vitale.^[2] Pope Benedict XIV purchased it from the Stazi family in 1752 and gave it to the Capitoline Museums,^[3] where it now resides in a niche of its own—called “the cabinet of Venus”—on the ground floor of the Palazzo Nuovo on the Campidoglio.

Aphrodite of Menophantos a Venus Pudica signed by Menophantos, first century BCE, found at San Gregorio al Celio, Rome (Museo Nazionale Romano)

Its reputation vis-a-vis the Venus de’ Medici in Florence grew only slowly, according to Haskell and Penny, fueled in part as a negative sensitivity to extensive restorations began to undermine the Florentine Venus. It was triumphantly removed to Paris by Napoleon under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino; the Emperor commissioned a marble replica from Joseph Chinard, now at the Château de Compiègne. When the original was returned to the Vatican in 1816, the plaster cast that had replaced it during the Napoleonic era was shipped to Britain, where John Flaxman praised it to his students (Haskell and Penny 1981:319).

The Campo Iemini Venus (British Museum)

Other types

The Aphrodite of Menophantos (illustration, right) was found at the Camaldolese monastery of San Gregorio al Celio. It bears the signature of Menophantos.^[4], a Greek sculptor, apparently of the first century BCE, of whom nothing more is known. The Camaldolese coenobites occupy the ancient church and monastery of S. Gregorii in Clivo Scauri founded by Pope Gregory the Great on his own family property, on the slope (clivus) of the Caelian Hill about 580. His foundation was dedicated in honor of the apostle Andrew. By the tenth century Gregory’s name was appended to that of the apostle, whom he eventually supplanted.^[5] The sculpture came into the possession of prince Chigi. Johann Joachim Winckelmann described this sculpture in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (vol V, ch. II).^[6]

The Campo Iemini Venus, another sculpture of the same model, was unearthed in the spring of 1792 among other sculptures in the excavation of a Roman villa at Campo Iemini, near Torvaianica, in Lazio (illustration, left). The dig was directed by the English dealer in Roman antiquities Robert Fagan (1761-1816) under the patronage of Prince Augustus, the Duke of Sussex in partnership with Sir Corbet Corbet of the British Museum. At the time of its discovery the English in particular found it superior to the Capitoline Venus. After restoration in Rome it was shipped to London, where Prince Augustus gave it to his brother the Prince Regent, who set it up at Carlton House. After his death, when Carlton House was replaced by a terrace of houses, William IV donated it to the British Museum.

Aphrodite Syracuse,Atenas. Hallada en Baias, sur de Italia

Another variant, now conserved at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.^[7]

It is a second century Roman copy of Parian marble that was found at Baiae.

Further variants are at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg,^[8] as well as the similar Venus Tauride.^[9][10]

• 2.the Barberini Venus

• 3. the Borghese Venus

Capitoline Venus Borghese Louvre Ma335.jpg

Artist	English: Copy of Praxiteles Français : Copie de Praxitèle
Description	English: Capitoline Venus, after the Aphrodite of Cnidus. Marble, Roman artwork of the Imperial Era (2nd century CE). From Rome. Français : Vénus du type du Capitole, dérivé de l’Aphrodite de Cnide. Marbre, œuvre romaine d’époque impériale (IIe siècle ap. J.-C.).
Date
Dimensions	H. 1.8 m (5 ft. 10 ¾ in.)
Current location	[show] (Inventory)Louvre Museum Native name Musée du Louvre Location Paris Coordinates 48°51′37″N 2°20′15″E / 48.860395°N 2.337599°E / 48.860395; 2.337599 Established 1793(1793) Website www.louvre.fr
	Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Sully, ground floor, room 17
Accession number	Ma 335 (MR 369)
Credit line	Borghese Collection; purchase, 1807
Source/Photographer	Jastrow (2005)

• 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
• 4. the Venus of Arles (Louvre, Paris)

--Restauración

Description	English: Statue of Aphrodite, known as the Venus of Arles. Hymettus marble, Roman artwork, imperial period (end of the 1st century BC), might be a copy of the Aphrodite of Thespiae by Praxiteles. The apple and the mirror were added during the 17th century. Found in the antic theatre of Arles, France. Français : Statue d’Aphrodite, dite Vénus d’Arles. Marbre de l’Hymette, œuvre romaine de l’époque de l’empereur Auguste (fin du Ier siècle av. J.-C.), peut-être une copie de l´Aphrodite de Thespies réalisée par Praxitèle. La pomme et le miroir sont des ajouts réalisés au 17e siècle. Découverte en 1651 dans le théâtre antique d’Arles, France.
Date
Dimensions	H. 1.94 m (6 ft. 4 ¼ in.)
Current location	Louvre Museum Native name Musée du Louvre Location Paris Coordinates 48°51′37″N 2°20′15″E / 48.860395°N 2.337599°E / 48.860395; 2.337599 Established 1793(1793) Website www.louvre.fr
	Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, gallery of the Melpomene
Accession number	Ma 439 (MR 365)
Credit line	French royal collections at Versailles; seized during the French Revolution
References	notice sur le site du Louvre
Source/Photographer	Marie-Lan Nguyen

Cabeza restaurada de la Afrodita de Arlés por-François Girardon-

Louvre Ma439 n04

• 5. the Aphrodite of Melos (the Venus de Milo, Louvre, Paris)

Venus de Milo,Louvre, París

Artist	Unknown
Description	English: So-called “Venus de Milo” (Aphrodite from Melos). Parian marble, ca. 130-100 BC? Found in Melos in 1820. Français : Vénus de Milo. Marbre de Paros, vers 130-100 av. J.-C. ? Provenance : Mélos (moderne Milo), 1820.
Date
Dimensions	H. 2.02 m (6 ft. 7 ½ in.)
Current location	(Inventory)Louvre Museum Native name Musée du Louvre Location Paris Coordinates 48°51′37″N 2°20′15″E / 48.860395°N 2.337599°E / 48.860395; 2.337599 Established 1793(1793) Website www.louvre.fr
	Temporary location: Department of Paintings, Sully, first floor, room 74
Accession number	Ma 399 (LL 299)
Credit line	Gift of the Marquis de Rivière to Louis XVIII of France, 1821
References	Hamiaux, M., Les Sculptures grecques, II, Paris, 1998, no. 52, pp. 41-44
Source/Photographer	Jastrow (2007)

Aphrodite of Milos (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη τῆς Μήλου, Aphroditē tēs Mēlou), better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) the Greek goddess of love and beauty. It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high. Its arms and original plinth have been lost. From an inscription that was on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch; it was earlier mistakenly attributed to the master sculptor Praxiteles. It is at present on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Foto trasera de la Venus de Milo, Muse del Louvre,París

• 6.the Venus de’ Medici (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

Venus Nedici, Pushkin Museum, Moscú

Description	Venus Medici. Cast in Pushkin Museum, Moscow
Date	2008(2008)
Current location	Uffizi Native name Galleria degli Uffizi Location Florence Coordinates 43°46′07″N 11°15′19″E / 43.768639°N 11.255214°E / 43.768639; 11.255214 Established 1581 (build), 1765 (open to public) Website www.polomuseale.firenze.it/musei/uffizi/
Source/Photographer	user:shakko (Own work)

The Venus de’ Medici or Medici Venus is a lifesize^[1] Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. It is a first century BC marble copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculpture, following the type of the Aphrodite of Cnidos,^[2] which would have been made by a sculptor in the immediate Praxitelean tradition, perhaps at the end of the century. It has become one of the navigation points by which the progress of the Western classical tradition is traced, the references to it an outline of the changes of taste and the process of classical scholarship^[3]. It is housed in the Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

The goddess is depicted in a fugitive, momentary pose, as if surprised in the act of emerging from the sea, to which the dolphin at her feet alludes. The dolphin would not have been a necessary support for the bronze original.

It bears a Greek inscription CLEOMENES SON OF APOLLODORUS OF ATHENS on its base.^[4] The inscription is not original, but in the eighteenth century the name “Cleomenes” was forged on sculptures of modest quality to enhance their value, while the inscription on the Venus de’ Medici was doubted in order to ascribe the work to one of various highly-thought-of names: besides Praxiteles the less-likely names of Phidias or Scopas.^[5] The restorations of the arms was made by Ercole Ferrata, who gave them long tapering Mannerist fingers that did not begin to be recognized as out of keeping with the sculpture until the nineteenth century.

The Venus de’ Medici is the name piece under which are recognized many replicas and fragments of this particular version of Praxiteles’ theme, which introduced the lifesize nude representation of Aphrodite. Though this particular variant is not identifiable in any extant literature, it must have been widely known to Greek and Roman connoisseurs. Among replicas and fragments of less importance,^[6] the closest in character and finest in quality is a marble Aphrodite at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, described below.

Such sculptures are described as “Roman copies”, with the understanding that these were produced, often by Greek sculptors, anywhere under Roman hegemony “say, between the dictatorship of Sulla and the removal of the Capital to Constantinople, 81 B.C. to A.D. 330″^[7] Their quality may vary from work produced by a fine sculptor for a discerning patron, to commonplace copies mass-produced for gardens.

• 7.the Esquiline Venus (Capitoline Museum, Rome)

Venus del Esquilino, posiblemente una representación idealizada de Cleopatra VII de Egipto

• 8.Venus of the Esquiline type (Louvre, Paris)[1]

• 9. the Crouching Venus (Louvre, Paris and British Museum, London)

Lely Venus, Museo Británico,Londres

The Crouching Venus is a Hellenistic model of Venus surprised at her bath. Venus crouches with her right knee close to the ground, turns her head to the right and, in most versions, reaches her right arm over to her left shoulder to cover her breasts.^[1] To judge by the number of copies that have been excavated on Roman sites in Italy and France, this variant on Venus seems to have been popular.

A number of examples of the Crouching Venus in prominent collections have influenced modern sculptors since Giambologna and have been drawn by artists since Martin Heemskerck, who made a drawing of the Farnese Crouching Venus that is now in Naples.

The model is often related to a corrupt passage in Pliny the Elder‘s Natural History (xxxvi.35), enumerating sculptures in the Temple of Jupiter Stator in the Portico of Ottava, near the Roman Forum; the text has been emended to a mention of Venerem lavantem sese Daedalsas, stantem Polycharmus (“Venus washing herself, of Daedalsas, [and another], standing, of Polycharmus”), recording a sculpture of a Venus who was not standing, by the otherwise unknown Doidalses or Daedalsas.^[2]

[edit] Ancient examples

Such terse archival references and so many existing ancient versions make archival identification of the Roman copies insecure, though some include a water jar and/or an additional figure of Eros which make identification easier (e.g. the Hermitage example, and here). The Crouching Venus was often paired with the other famous crouching sculpture of Antiquity, the Arrotino.

• The Crouching Venus of the Medici collection, noted at Villa Medici, Rome, is now at the Uffizi in Florence. It was engraved (with its restored sea-shell - see here) by Paolo Alessandro Maffei, Raccolta di statue antiche e moderni…, 1704 (plate XXVIII)

• The Crouching Venus of the Farnese collection of marbles, restored with a small Eros who engages the goddess’s attention, is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. It was drawn by Martin Heemskerck.[1]^[3]

• The Crouching Venus of the Borghese collection, purchased in 1807 from Camillo Borghese, now in the Louvre. In the Borghese collection it had been freely restored as a Diana, holding her hunting bow in her right hand.^[4]

Vénus Accroupie (Musée du Louvre)

• The Lely Venus (main image, above) is an Antonine marble that was in the Gonzaga collection, Mantua, where it was inventoried in the Gonzaga collection in 1627^[5] and was remarked in England in 1631 as “the finest statue of all” and valued at 6000 ecus.^[6] It was purchased in 1627-28 from the Gonzagas for Charles I of England,^[7] whose art collections were dispersed during the Commonwealth, when it was purchased by the painter and connoisseur Sir Peter Lely.^[8] It passed once again into the Royal Collection in 1682 and is on loan to the British Museum [2].

• The Crouching Venus excavated at Salona (modern Solin near Split, Croatia) in the second half of the eighteenth century was purchased for the Vatican Museums, where it was etched by Francesco, the son of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, then confiscated by the French under Napoleon but returned to the Vatican in 1816, where it remains.

• The Vénus Accroupie, is a second-century crouching Venus from the collection of Louis XIV, now in the Musée du Louvre. In a variation, her right arm is raised behind her head.[3]

Artist	Unknown
Description	English: Crouching Aphrodite. Marble, Roman copy of the 1st-2nd century CE after a Hellenistic original of the 3rd century BC, loosely derived from the Cnidian Aphrodite by Praxiteles. From Sainte-Colombe, Isère, France. Français : Aphrodite accroupie. Marbre, copie romaine du Ier-IIe siècle ap. J.-C. d’après un original hellénistique du IIIe siècle ap. J.-C., dérivé de l’Aphrodite de Cnide de Praxitèle. Provenance : Sainte-Colombe, Isère, France.
Date
Dimensions	H. 96 cm (37 ¾ in.)
Current location	[show] (Inventory)Louvre Museum Native name Musée du Louvre Location Paris Coordinates 48°51′37″N 2°20′15″E / 48.860395°N 2.337599°E / 48.860395; 2.337599 Established 1793(1793) Website www.louvre.fr
	Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Sully, ground floor, room 17
Accession number	Ma 2240 (MNB 1292)
Credit line	Gerantet Collection; purchase, 1878
Source/Photographer	Jastrow (2007)

• The Crouching Venus of Vienne, first or second-century CE, considered one of the finest Roman marbles of this type,^[9] was excavated in 1828 at Sainte-Colombe, on the right bank of the Rhône, part of the ancient city of Vienne which lies across the river; it was purchased from the Gerantet collection in 1878 for the Louvre,^[10] where Cézanne drew it and adapted it for one of the figures in his Grande Baigneuses (Philadelphia). The remains of a small hand on her back show that this was one of the versions that included a little Eros

Crouching Aphrodite Louvre Ma53

• A Crouching Venus that was excavated at that quarry of antiquities, Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, in the 1920s, is accounted among the finest of the Roman versions (Haskell and Penny 1981:323). It is conserved in essentially unrestored condition in the Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome.

• A small marble Crouching Aphrodite of the first century BCE, discovered in Rhodes and conserved in the Rhodes Archaeological Museum, is a variant of the pose in which - instead of attempting to cover up modestly - Venus lifts her hair in her fingers to dry it, looks out at the viewer and openly displays her breasts.^[11] The type is sometimes distinguished as the Crouching Aphrodite of Rhodes.

Small ancient bronzes of the Crouching Venus have survived. One, found in Syria, and formerly in the collection of Joseph Durighello, was sold by the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris.^[12]

• 10.the Aphrodite Kallipygos (aka Venus Kalypygos, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Naples)

Venus Calipigia. Museo Arqueológico de Nápoles

Capia del Museo del Hermitage,San Petersburgo, de la Venus Calipia o “de las bellas nalgas”

The Venus Kallipygos or Aphrodite Kallipygos (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη Καλλίπυγος), also known as the Callipygian Venus, all literally meaning “Venus (or Aphrodite) of the beautiful buttocks”,^[1] is an Ancient Roman marble statue, thought to be a copy of an older Greek original. In an example of anasyrma, it depicts a partially draped woman, raising her light peplos to uncover her hips and buttocks, and looking back and down over her shoulder, perhaps to evaluate them. The subject is conventionally identified as Venus (Aphrodite), though it may equally be a portrait of a mortal woman.

The statue dates to the late 1st century BC.^[2] The lost original on which it is based is thought to have been bronze, and to have been executed around 300 BC, towards the beginning of the Hellenistic era.^[2] Its provenance is unknown, but it was rediscovered, missing its head, in the early modern era. The head was restored, first in the 16th century and again in the 18th century (in which case the sculptor followed the earlier restoration fairly closely); the restored head was made to look over the shoulder, drawing further attention to the statue’s bare buttocks and thereby contributing to its popularity.^[3] In the 17th and 18th centuries the statue was identified as Venus and associated with a temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos at Syracuse, discussed by Athenaeus in his Deipnosophists. The statue was copied a number of times, including by Jean-Jacques Clérion and François Barois.

• 11.the Venus Victrix (Uffizi Gallery)

• 12.Venus Urania (Uffizi Gallery)

• 13.The Mazarin Venus, named after Cardinal Mazarin (now in the J. Paul Getty Museum)[2]
• 14.An example with added figures of Pan and Cupid at the Athens National Archaeological Museum.[3]
• 15.The Venus Felix at the Vatican Museums, a possible variation of the type.[4]

Venus Felix

The Venus Felix is a sculpture of Venus and her son Cupid. It was dedicated by Sallustia and Helpidus to Venus Felix. Its head resembles Faustina the Younger. It is now held at the Museo Pio-Clementino of the Vatican Museums, Rome, and is displayed in the Octagon of the Hermes Hall.

Notas