Aphrodite vs. Birth of Venus
Throughout the history of art the human form has captured artisans and their audiences.
While the human form has always been acceptable in art, the nude female form continues to stir up controversy. Praxiteles was a famous artist during the Greek late classical period who sculpted and created controversy on the island of Knidos when he made Aphrodite of Knidos
(350-340 B.C.). This new idea of a nude goddess made the island famous, putting it on the map as a tourist attraction. Approximately a 1,100 years later Sandro Botticelli took the idea of the nude goddess and depicted the same image in his painting The Birth of Venus (1482). This portrait was painted during the Early Italian Renaissance …show more content…

Just looking into the face of either goddess any person can feel their emotion rather than a sense of their ethics. The nude female forms that has been depicted by
Praxiteles were that of slave girls and courtesans and never had there been a goddess or noblewomen with no clothes. It is said that Praxiteles used the courtesan Phryne as a model for the statue, which added a more controversial topic and gossip that was already revolving around the piece. The significance of Praxiteles using this courtesan was that he decided to mimic one of the most admired goddesses, the goddess of love, lust and beauty, with a mere mistress. It was also said that Botticelli used his mistress as his main inspiration for The Birth of Venus.
Although today we do not see as much religious art, our society would see the parallels of these propagandist pieces and the everyday advertisements that we witness. The biggest difference between Aphrodite of Knidos and The Birth of Venus is pretty black and white. The time periods and style of art are both very different from eachother by thousands of years. Praxiteles was said to have been born into a family of sculptors during the Greek Late Classical period, whereas Botticelli designed his work of art during the Early a
Italian