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Knidos Aphrodite, Roman copy after 4th century BC Greek original, Palazzo Altemps, Rome

Engraving of a coin of Aphrodite of Knidos compared to the Roman copies of the Aphrodite.

The Aphrodite of Knidos was a Greek sculpture created by Praxiteles of Athens around 4th century BCE.It is one of the first representations of the nude female form in Greek history while displaying an alternative idea to male heroic nudity. Praxiteles' Aphrodite is shown nude, reaching for a bath towel while covering her pubis, which, in turn leaves her breasts exposed. Up until this point, Greek sculpture had been dominated by male, nude figures, voyeurism playing a strong role in sculpture. Because sculpture was created for the male viewer, by the male viewer to please the gods, nudity was shown as heroic because they figures depicted where accomplishing valiant things. Women were not seen or depicted as heroic because of their domestic roles in society, and domesticity was not seen as heroic.

Pliny the Elder claimed that Praxiteles' statue put the new Knidos on the map, a claim confirmed by numerous Knidian coin issues (mostly Roman) showing a nude Aphrodite by a vase. (An example is shown on the right)

The Aphrodite of Knidos is famous for its beauty and innovative depiction of the female nude. It is meant to be appreciated from every angle, as it is one of the first life-sized representations of the nude female form. At the time of it's construction, women were not depicted nude in sculpture, as it was reserved for men. The Knidian sculpture depicted the goddess Aphrodite as she prepared for the ritual bath that restored her purity (not virginity), discarding her drapery with one hand, while modestly shielding herself with the other. Her hands are placed in a motion that simultaneously shields her womanhood and draws attention to her nudity. Because the various copies show different body shapes, poses and accessories, the original can only be described in general terms; the body bending in a "venus pudica" position, as well as posing in a soft contrapposto, an artistic innovation of Greek art which realistically portrays normal human stance, with the head probably turned to the left. While it is popular belief that the female nude has always been a classical subject, it had taken nearly three centuries for her to make her debut after her nude male counterpart.

The Statue of the Goddess established a canon for the female nude, and inspired many copies to follow it's lead, the best of which is considered to be the Colonna Knidia, which is in the Vatican's Pio-Clementine Museum. 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 AD 475.

The statue became a tourist attraction in spite of being a cult image. Men from all around the region wanted to see the beautiful statue. There is a story that claims that a man was so erotically charged by the statue that he went to it in the middle of the night and ejaculated on the statue. Knidos was said to have been so proud that their statue could produce such radical and erotic emotions out of a man that they decided to no wash the semen off the statue as a visual reminder to travelers and viewers.

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 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. This story is recorded in the dialogue Erotes (section 15), traditionally misattributed to Lucian of Samosata. The story claims that a man was so erotically charged by the statue that he went to it in the middle of the night and copulated with the statue. After realizing what he had done, the man leaped of the nearest cliff to his death, ashamed that he had defaced the statue. Knidos was said to have been so proud that their statue could produce such radical, erotic emotions out of a man that they decided to no wash the semen off the statue as a visual reminder to travelers and viewers.

Roman copy Praxiteles' Venus.

Around 330 BCE, Praxiteles was commissioned to create a sculpture of Aphrodite for the city of Kos, a Greek Island located in the southeastern Aegean sea.

He created two statues: one fully clothed and the other naked. When Kos chose between the Aphrodites,they were horrified at the depiction of Aphrodite nude so they decided to take the clothed statue back to Kos, leaving Knidos with the remaining Aphrodite. Knidos bought the remaining Aphrodite back to their island and she was installed in Knidos' sanctuary to the goddess, and soon gained a widespread cult-like following for its beauty.

Belozerskaya, M., & Lapatin, K. (2004). Ancient Greece: Art, architecture, and history. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.

James, S., & Dillon, S. (2012). A Companion to Women in the Ancient World (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World). Hoboken: Wiley.