Knidian Aphrodid Analysis

Most modern commentators have taken the ancient sources at face value and assume that the intended viewer of the Knidia was male. The satirical account of the writer known as Pseudo-Lucian (about 125 CE – 180 CE) was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language during the Second Sophistic period. He suggests that the statue was equally desirable for both hetero - and homosexual viewers.

Charikles (an ancient Athenian politician, notorious for his role as one of the Thirty Tyrants), indeed, shouted out in a mad and deranged way, “Happiest of all gods was Ares who was bound for this goddess,” and with that he ran up and stretching his neck as far as he could kissed it on its shining lips. But Callikratidas (a Spartan naval commander

Modern commentators have focused on the nudity of the statue and its erotic effect on her male viewers. Robin Osborne (1994, p.85) identified the Knidian Aphrodite as “an uncommonly powerful work.” Citing the supposed responses of male viewers recorded in the ancient literary sources, he concludes: “Rich though the message of this statue is about male sexuality, it has very little to say about female sexuality.” Hence, he suggests (1994, p.86) that the Knidian Aphrodite should “be seen to play upon male desire, male sexuality, and male expectations and values, and to say nothing to

This is the date of the tiny statuette, probably designed to be held in the hand, popularly called the Willendorf Venus and depicting a corpulent female. Like much early art, she was almost certainly a fertility symbol of some kind. Indian temple art, some dating from at least the 1st century BC, often depicts voluptuous female nudes and again, these erotic figures had a serious religious function, representing various manifestations of fertility