This was the Aphrodite of Grecian legend and poetry, if we except Homer and Hesiod. It is the type of the goddess whom Sappho implored, and must be accepted as the general ideal of the Grecian worshippers who desired divine mediation when troubled with pangs of the heart. But it was not the type of Phidias and his school, for Phidias passed over Hesiod and purified Homer, representing Aphrodite with the stately mien and lofty bearing of a queen of heaven, daughter of the all-powerful Dione: goddess of beauty and love certainly, but so far above the human understanding of these terms that all efforts to associate her with mundane ideas and aspirations must signally fail.[44]
So far as we know it was Praxiteles who first attempted to realize in stone the popular ideal of the goddess, and certainly the Cnidian Aphrodite was better understood by the people of Greece as a type of this ideal than any work that preceded it. We can attach to it in our minds but very few of the Homeric and other legends surrounding the history of the goddess, but we can well imagine that a deity who was the subject of so much attention and so much prayer, could rest in the hearts of the people only as one with every supreme earthly charm, combined with a divine bearing and dignity. These qualities the Aphrodite of Praxiteles appears to have possessed, though it lacked the majesty and exclusiveness of the Parthenon gods.[45]
Thus there was formed a type of beauty acceptable to the average human mind as an unsurpassable representation of an ideal woman: to the worshipper at the ancient shrines, a comprehensible goddess; to all other men the personification of sublime beauty. The fifth century goddess was left aside as beyond mortal reach, and from the time it left the sculptor's hands to this day, the Cnidian Venus has been regarded as a model for all that is true and beautiful in women. To the sculptor it is an everlasting beacon; to all men a crowning glory of human handiwork. And this notwithstanding that so far as we know, the original figure has long been lost, and we have preserved little more than records of its renown, a fair copy of it, and a single authentic example of the other work of the sculptor. But if we had the actual Aphrodite before us, it could not occupy a higher place in our minds than the goddess which our imagination builds upon this framework.
As in all cases where a supreme artist rises above his fellows and creates works of which emulation appears hopeless, the period succeeding the time of Praxiteles seems to mark a decline in the art of sculpture, and though the decline was more apparent than real for about half a century, there was naturally a depreciation in the representation of the deities of whom the great man had fashioned masterpieces. This was so in the case of Aphrodite. Whoever the sculptor it seemed impossible to approach the Cnidian ideal, and the result was a series of variations stamped with artificial devices as if to emphasize the departure. But meanwhile the painter's art had developed upon much the same lines as sculpture, and Apelles produced an Aphrodite, which, considering the limitation of the painter, appears to have been almost, if not quite, as marvellous as the stone model of Praxiteles. Nearly two thousand years have passed since the painting was last known to exist, but its fame was so great that the reverberations from the thunder of praise accorded it have scarcely yet died away. No close description of the painting remains, but from certain references to it by ancient authors we know that it represented the sea-born goddess walking towards the shore to make her first appearance on earth, holding in each hand a tress of hair as if in the act of wringing out the water therein.[46] These are practically all the written details we have of the famous Venus Anadyomene, but we really know much more of it from the existence of certain pre-Roman sculptures. All but one are broken, with parts missing, but the exception, which dates from about the beginning of the third century B.C., enables us to gain a good idea of the picture. The figure represents the goddess with her lower limbs cut off close to the hips; that is to say, it produces the whole of that part of the figure in the picture of Apelles which is visible above the water.[] Clearly a subject in which Venus is shown to be walking in the sea, so foreign to the art of the sculptor, could not have suggested itself independently to a Grecian artist, nor would we expect to find one attempting a work which necessitated amputation of the lower limbs, unless a very special occasion warranted the design. The special occasion in this case was the picture of Apelles, which was at the time renowned through the whole of Greece as an extraordinary masterpiece, and with this work in their minds the sculptured head and torso would appear quite appropriate to those Greeks interested in the arts, that is to say, the entire citizen population.
The Pursuit, by Fragonard
(Frick Collection)
(See [page 139])
These two works then, the Cnidian Venus and the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles, constitute the models upon which the world relies for its conceptions of the goddess of beauty. Both models depend more or less upon the imagination for completion, but they are sufficiently definite for the artist, who, of course, desires general rather than particular ideas for his purpose.
It must be confessed that the attempts to rival Apelles in the creation of a Venus Anadyomene have not been very successful. Raphael painted a small picture of the subject, introducing the figure of Time putting an end to the power of the Titans.[c] Venus stands in the water with one foot on a shell, while holding a tress of hair with her left hand. As may be expected the execution is perfect, but the design is less attractive than that of Apelles. The only important work of the Renaissance directly based upon the Greek design, is from the hand of Titian.[d] He represents the goddess walking out of the water, the surface of which only reaches half way up the thighs, with the result that considerably more action is indicated than is necessary. But the great artist was evidently at a loss to know how to give the figure the size of life or thereabouts, while indicating from the depth of water that she had an appreciable distance to go before touching dry land. He solved the problem by placing the line of the front leg to which the water rises, at the bottom of the canvas, so that the picture suggests an accident which has necessitated the cutting away of the lower portion of the work. The master also varies the scheme of Apelles by crossing the left hand over the breast. This inferior device was imitated by Rubens, who, however, exhibits the goddess rising from the water amongst a group of nymphs and tritons.[e] Modern artists in designs of the birth of Venus, usually represent her as having reached the shore,[f] the best work of this scheme being perhaps that of Cabanel who shows the goddess lying at the water's edge and just awaking, suggesting a state of unconsciousness while she floated on the waves.[g] Another exception is by Thoma, who exhibits the goddess walking in only a few inches of water, reminding one of the old Roman bronze workers who imitated the form as painted by Apelles, but modelled the whole figure.