Discovering Aphrodite at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
By Theresa Thompson, Art Correspondent for Timeless Travels.
Crouching Aphrodite, Roman, after Hellenistic original, 2nd century CE, Marble, 125 x 53 x 65 cm.
The Royal Collection/ HM King Charles III, © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2026 | Royal Collection Trust. Photograph: British Museum
The Greek goddess Aphrodite – Venus, her Roman counterpart – one of the twelve great Olympian deities, the loveliest of the gods, is known by all as the goddess of erotic love and beauty.
She rises from the sea in a shell or spray of sea foam, or rides a dolphin or a swan, depending on the artistic interpretation; she crouches hiding her modesty caught unawares bathing; she is infatuated with the beautiful mortal Adonis from the moment he’s born; she is inextricably linked with the decade long Trojan War after Paris judged her the most beautiful goddess and gave her the golden apple; and she was mother to Aeneas, legendary ancestor of Rome.
The myths around Aphrodite and her depictions are myriad. Having captivated imaginations and inspired artists over the centuries, beginning in ancient Greece and Rome, her fame fading a little then gaining a gigantic boost in the Renaissance, even today Aphrodite and Venus still shape our ideas of love and beauty in Western culture.
But what is less well known about Aphrodite is the multitude of other powers and roles that were attributed to her, and her connections to the island of Cyprus and the late Bronze Age. This is the where the Ashmolean’s major exhibition comes into its own. With around 200 objects to see, including some wonderful world-class loans, it is well worth making the trip to Oxford to discover the story of how, as curator Dr Anja Ulbrich puts it, “a goddess worshipped in ancient Cyprus became one of the most enduring and recognisable figures in human history.”
Aphrodite is the most flamboyant and glamorous goddess with the most complex personality and diverse powers among the twelve principal ancient Greek gods who reigned on Mount Olympus, writes Ulbrich, a leading expert on Cypriot archaeology and female deities of Cyprus, in the insightful exhibition catalogue.
There are few figures in human history, fewer women still, whose fame has lasted for 5,000 years, the museum states.
Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) and workshop, Venus, c. 1490, Tempera on canvas, 158.1 x 68.5 cm.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Photograph: Jörg P. Anders
Her story and thus the exhibition begins in ancient Cyprus, the island where she emerged as a goddess (at Paphos, it is said) and where visitors and immigrants from the Greek Aegean first encountered her.
The show explores the cult of the goddess in ancient Cyprus evolved from a much older tradition of female deities worshipped across the eastern Mediterranean, including Astarte and Ishtar. Soon we learn that she is connected to the sky, the sea and seafaring, to nature and fertility, marriage, dancing, and to politics and war. At one stage it begins to seem like she rules every aspect of human life and nature!
But groundbreakingly, Aphrodite is also the first female to be depicted nude in Greek art. And she is natural, not stylised, she’s a woman, a normal curvy woman, unlike the stiff earlier statues of goddesses which were formal and expressionless. Most of the truly famous statues and paintings of Aphrodite reveal her nude or with scarcely a drape upon her (her long golden tresses serving that role), as for instance, Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) who immortalised her with his glorious painting The Birth of Venus c. 1490 – and thus gave her one of the most recognisable faces in the history of art (note, that treasured painting remains in the Uffizi, Florence and is not in Oxford’s show). However, Botticelli’s Venus, c. 1490, a tempera on canvas painting from the same year, on loan from Berlin, is on show and one of the exhibition highlights.
Ullrich comments, in a way “the whole exhibition is about Aphrodite revealing herself.”
In the statue Crouching Aphrodite she reveals herself fully naked, apparently caught by surprise after bathing, turning her head away, her arms crossing her body in a futile attempt to cover herself. The Roman marble sculpture made in the second century CE after the Hellenistic original is a loan from the Royal Collection, and it is this statue that greets visitors impressively in the opening gallery.
This is one of the more familiar poses of the goddess, and like the two standing figures at the end of the second gallery – remarkable loans both – its popularity spawned thousands of copies and variations. The most celebrated statue of the goddess was the Aphrodite of Knidos, made by Praxiteles for her sanctuary at Knidos in modern day Turkey. The famous 4th century BCE sculpture no longer survives, but countless copies do, such as the softly modelled marble Roman version known as the Capitoline Aphrodite with Eros and Dolphin in the Ashmolean’s show. On loan from Italy, the second century CE sculpture shows the goddess in what is called the ‘Venus Pudica’ pose, now a classic pose in Western art.
A copper alloy figurine from Cyprus, dating from 1200 BCE, is the earliest-known representation of Aphrodite – that is to say, the Cypriot cult goddess Astarte, later renamed Aphrodite by the Greeks. Astarte was a goddess of fertility, sexual love, and war in the ancient Near East, and her cult had spread via maritime trade to key trading hubs like Cyprus. The unique figurine is the oldest object in the exhibition and comes from the Ashmolean’s own collection. It shows a nude female figure with braid hanging over one shoulder who stands on a copper ingot. In antiquity the island of Cyprus was famous for its copper resources. In fact, the word copper is derived from the Greek name for the island, Kupros.
Figurine of Astarte on an ingot, Enkomi, Cyprus, 1200–1100 BCE, Copper alloy, height 9.9 cm
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A nearby miniature votive altar dating to 500-450 BCE made from limestone has scenes of sheep sacrifice and ritual feasting carved into its sides, which give glimpses into ritual practices of the time. Intriguingly, it also has on its base an inscription in the island’s Cypro-Syllabic script, which I learn no-one has yet deciphered.
Other highlights include the first full-scale bronze cast of the original Venus de' Medici, commissioned for Blenheim Palace by the 1st Duke of Marlborough in 1711, and spectacular antiquities like the Louvre’s mosaic from Tunisia (200–250 CE) showing Aphrodite sailing on a barge.
A plethora of ancient vases, sculpture, jewellery, Renaissance and later drawings, etchings and paintings, add to this wonderful exploration of the goddess’s innumerable reinterpretations through the ages. One work here, a drawing by British sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) shows the meticulous care he, and many others like him took to measure and examine the Venus de’ Medici sculpture in order to replicate what they considered “the epitome of antique artistry,” said co-curator Peter Thompson.
The exhibition finishes with a dip into modern and contemporary visions of the goddess. The power and recognisability of the ancient Aphrodite/Venus image persist in popular culture, denoting beauty, desire and sex, in advertising, in fashion, publishing and the music industry, and in the thought-provoking works selected to close the show. I like the way they did this. I like the way they just kept this section to a few pieces; they made their point. For one, showing the fashion house Loewe’s hand motif dress, 2022, that slickly references the Venus pudica pose by including an image of arms in appropriate places on the front, making the dress a sort of living sculpture. And then, spectacularly using Michelangelo Pistoletto’s subversive Venus of the Rags, 1974, to prompt consideration of issues like mass production, commercialism and replication, besides society’s changing aesthetic values and attitudes. In Pistoletto’s version, the famous statue stands facing into a pile of discarded multicoloured rags. Asking questions of us.
Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK
Showing until: 11 April 2027
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