Aphrodite - Venus
APHRODITE was the Olympian goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation. She was depicted as a beautiful woman often accompanied by the winged godling Eros (Love). Her attributes included a dove, apple, scallop shell and mirror. In classical sculpture and fresco she was usually depicted nude. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess Venus. The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna. Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera, Cyprus, Corinth, and Athens. Her main festival was the Aphrodisia, which was celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She was also the patron goddess of prostitutes, an association which led early scholars to propose the concept of "sacred prostitution" in Greco-Roman culture, an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous. In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam (αφρός aphrós) produced by Uranus's genitals, which his son Cronus has severed and thrown into the sea. In Homer's Iliad, however, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Plato, in his Symposium 180e, asserts that these two origins actually belong to separate entities: Aphrodite Ourania (a transcendent, "Heavenly" Aphrodite) and Aphrodite Pandemos (Aphrodite common to "all the people"). Aphrodite had many other epithets, each emphasizing a different aspect of the same goddess, or used by a different local cult. Thus she was also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus), because both locations claimed to be the place of her birth.
Aphrodite - Venus Stamp Collection
Aphrodite, from Soli, Cyprus, 1st century B.C.E. The Greek goddess of love and fertility, was the primary deity of Cyprus, which, according to legend, was her birthplace. For thousands of years, Cypriot artists have depicted the goddess in all manner of styles—from plank-shaped images of the Bronze Age, to figures that show influences from the Near East and Egypt, to the classic statuary of the Greek and Roman eras.
Cyprus 1966
Cyprus 1979 With the rock of Aphrodite "Petra-tou-Romlou" near Pissouri according to the legend of the birth place.
Cyprus 2002 With a map from the 15 century
<------------
The whole block
Cyprus 2004 With the rock of Aphrodite "Petra-tou-Romlou" near Pissouri
Cyprus 2000 for miss univers contest in Nicosia
Cyprus 2008 The inception of Euro currency. Parallel with Malta
Malta 2008 The inception of Euro currency. Parallel with Cyprus
France 2006 Dedicated to the capital city - Nicosia
Albania 1985 Aphrodite Pandemos, Terracotta Illyrian Bust, from Elbasan, Albania, 3rd Century BC, Tirana, Museo Archeologico
Albania 1987 Aphrodite, Terracotta, Illyrian statue, 3rd Century BC.
Albania 1987 Head of Aphrodite , Antique bronze statue, 4th century BC
San Marino 1975 Head of Aphrodite ,marble Stampexhibition "Europa'' in Napoli
Russia 2003 Statue of Aphrodite , in Tsarskoye Selo against Catherine Palace.
Cyprus 1962 Marble head of Aphrodite
discovered in Roman gymnasium at Salamis, where it have been built into a wall. The facial expression and treatment of the hair recall the style of Greek sculpture of the beginning of the 4 century B.C., the time of the reign of Evagoras at Salamis, who is known to have favoured Greek culture. Cyprus Museum.
A sculpture of Aphrodite, Pan and Eros, exhibited in the National Archaelogical Museum of Athens, in Greece. The sculpture was made at about 100 BC of Parian marble, and was found on the island of Delos, in the House of the Poseidoniasts of Beirut. On the low base of the group an inscription is carved: ‘Dionysos, son of Zenon who was son Theodoros, from Beirut dedicated [this offering] to the ancestral gods for his own benefit and that of his children’.
Aphrodite (Venus for the Romans) is the goddess of love and beauty. Eros (Cupid for the Romans) is the god of love, son of Aphrodite. Pan is the god of the Wild, half goat half man.
Armenia 2007 Sculpture of Aphrodite
Greece 2007 Sculpture of Aphrodite
The painting on the right was taken from this Attic Red Figure (White Ground) of a kylix Attributed to the Pistoxenos Painter 460 B.C. from the British Museum, London
Greece 1986 Aphrodite rides side-saddle on the back of a goose. She holds a plant frond and wears a head scarf (sakkos).
Greece 1959 Aphrodite and Apollo, Cyprus, 4th cent. B.C.
Roman Republic C. Norbanus 83BC Rare Ancient Silver Coin VENUS Commerce
Spain 1967 Head of Aphrodite on a roman silver dinar for the Bimillenary of the city Caceres
France 1976 Venus of Brassempouy
Mali 1994 Venus of Brassempouy
The Venus of Brassempouy , meaning "Lady of Brassempouy", or Dame à la Capuche, "Lady with the Hood" is a fragmentary ivory figurine from the Upper Palaeolithic, apparently broken from a larger figure at some time unknown. It was discovered in a cave at Brassempouy, France in 1892. About 25,000 years old, it is one of the earliest known realistic representations of a human face.
Austria 2008 The Venus of Willendorf is an 11.1-centimetre-tall Venus figurine estimated to have been made 30,000 BCE. It was found on August 7, 1908, by a workman during excavations at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the town of Krems. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. The figurine is now in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Malta 2008 Venus of Malta
Cyprus 2008 Venus of Malta
Venus of Malta 4,500 BCE
The dreamer is lying on her side on a low couch, one enormous right forearm underneath her head, the other draped across her heavy breast. She is ample-hipped and topless
The Venus of Moravany is a small prehistoric female figurine discovered in Slovakia in the early 20th century.
It was ploughed up sometime before 1930 by the farmer Štefan Hulman-Petrech in Podkovica near the village of Moravany nad Váhom in Slovakia.
It is made of mammoth tusk ivory and is dated to 22,800 BCE.
Slovakia 2006 Venus of Moravany
Japan 1998 The Jōmon Venus is a dogū, a humanoid clay female figurine from the Middle Jōmon period (3,000–2,000 BC),discovered in 1986 in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. It was designated a National Treasure in 1995, the first Jōmon-period artifact to be so designated.
The Venus of Dolní Věstonice ( is a Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE (Gravettian industry). It was found at the Paleolithic site Dolní Věstonice in the Moravian basin south of Brno, in the base of Děvín Mountain, 549 metres (1,801 ft). This figurine and a few others from locations nearby are the oldest known ceramic articles in the world.
Czech Republic 2017 Venus of Dolní Věstonice
Italy 1985 fresco depicting Venus riding in a chariot from the vault of the entrance loggia of the Farnesina, Agostino Chigi's villa in Rome, which was frescoed with mythological subjects by Raphael's workshop c.1518.
Italia 1957 Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix by
Antonio Canova 1805–1808
Bolivia 2002 Black Venus
Artwork of Marina Nuñez del Prado (1908-1995).
Berlin 1974 Venus from Porcelan. A figure by Friedrich Elias Meyer (1723-1785) .
San Marino 2007 Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix by
Antonio Canova 1805–1808
Ajman 1972 Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix by
Antonio Canova 1805–1808
Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix (or Venus Victorious) is a semi-nude life-size reclining neo-Classical portrait sculpture by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Reviving the ancient Roman artistic traditions of portrayals of mortal individuals in the guise of the gods, and of the beautiful female form reclining on a couch (as most often seen in reclining portrayals of Hermaphroditi), it was commissioned by Pauline Bonaparte's husband Camillo Borghese and executed in Rome from 1805 to 1808, after the subject's marriage into the Borghese family. It then moved to Camillo's house in Turin, then to Genoa, only arriving in its present home (the Galleria Borghese in Rome) around 1838.
Ajman 1972 Canova's first marble Venus is in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Known as the Venus Italica, it was ordered in 1804 by Ludovico I, King of Etruria, as a replacement for the ancient Medici Venus that had been taken by the French for the Musée Napoleon.
Sierra leone 1996 Aphrodite brought forth from the ocean foam
Cytherean is an adjective literally meaning of Cythera . Cythera is a small Greek island, southeast of the Peloponnesus, and the legendary birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite (Venus). The word Cytherean was first applied to the goddess and later, due to word taboo, to the planet Venus that had been named after the goddess.
Ajman 1971 Venus Cythera by Jan Massys 1561
Ajman 1971 Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder 1532
Fujeira 1972 Venus by Modigliani 1917
Venus by Lorenzo di Credi - This canvas was found by chance at the Medici villa of Cafaggiolo in 1869. It would seem to be an unfinished work. A close examination of the painting reveals the transparency of the figure's extremely thin skin, almost as if there had been only a first, provisional application of the paint. The fair-haired, muscular young woman is called Venus because of her clear affinity with classical prototype of the "Venere Pudica".
Paraguay 1973 Venus by Lorenzo di Credi 1494
Hungary 1970 Venus and Satyr
by Sebastiano Ricci 1720 Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest)
Hungary 1969 Sleeping Venus on clouds
Simon Vouet 1640 Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest)
Italy 1994 Bacchus, Venus and Ariadne
by Jacopo Tintoretto
Bacchus, Venus and Ariadne is an oil painting executed in Venice in 1576–77 by the Italian painter Jacopo Tintoretto which hangs in the Sala dell'Anticollegio at the Doge's Palace in Venice. It is one of four almost square paintings on mythological subjects in the same room which were commissioned to celebrate the government of Doge Girolamo Priuli (1486–1567).
It depicts the god Bacchus arriving from the sea with a wreath and a skirt of vine leaves, bearing a bunch of grapes and a marriage ring. Ariadne is extending her ring finger in anticipation as the goddess Venus crowns her with a crown of stars. Ariadne was a Cretan princess, half-sister of the Minotaur, who had eloped with Theseus after he had killed the Minotaur. Theseus subsequently abandoned her on the island of Naxos where she was discovered by Bacchus. Bacchus and Ariadne were married and Ariadne elevated to join the gods, immortalised as the constellation Corona Borealis.
Ariadne personified Venice, favoured by the gods and crowned in glory, the marriage representing the union of Venice with the sea.
Paraguay 1973 Bacchus, Venus and Ariadne
by Jacopo Tintoretto (detail)
Paraguay 1975 Sacred and profane love by Titian
Italy 1995 Sacred and profane love by Titian
Grenada Grenadines 1988 Sacred and profane love by Titian
Two women, who appear to be modelled on the same person, sit on a carved Ancient Roman sarcophagus that has been converted to a water-trough, or a trough made to look like a Roman sarcophagus; the broad ledges here are not found in actual sarcophagi. How the water enters is unclear, but it leaves through a phallic-looking brass spout between the two women, next to an anachronistic coat of arms in the carving.
Scholars have proposed several identifications of the figures, and analyses and interpretations which largely flow from these. The concept of Geminae Veneres or "Twin Venuses", a dual nature in Venus, was well developed in both classical thought and Renaissance Neoplatonism, with the earthly Aphrodite Pandemos, representing carnal love and beauty, and the heavenly Aphrodite Urania representing a higher and more spiritual love, using the classical terms for the figures. Erwin Panofsky and others found both in the painting, with the earthly Venus the nude one.Others see the clothed figure as representing the bride (idealized, and not a portrait, which would have been rather indecorous in Venice), and only the nude figure representing Venus. For Edgar Wind the theme was "an initiation of Beauty [at left] into Love".
France 2000 Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman (detail) by Botticelli
Guyana 1993 Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman (detail) by Botticelli
St Kitts 2011 Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman (detail) by Botticelli
Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman, also known as Giovanna degli Albizzi Receiving a Gift of Flowers from Venus, is a fresco painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli of circa 1483–1486. The painting and its companion piece, A Young Man Being Introduced to the Seven Liberal Arts, originally decorated the walls of Villa Lemmi, a country villa near Florence owned by Giovanni Tornabuoni, uncle of Lorenzo de' Medici and head of the Roman branch of the Medici Bank. They were probably commissioned for the wedding in 1486 of Giovanni's son Lorenzo to Giovanna of the Albizzi family, and are therefore thought to depict the two.
Venus and the Three Graces Presenting Gifts to a Young Woman shows a young woman, probably Giovanna Tornabuoni, being received by Venus and the three Graces. Giovanna holds open a white cloth, into which Venus is laying roses symbolizing beauty and love.
The whole painting
San Marino 1972 Primavera (venus in the middle) by Botticelli 1480
Primavera by Botticelli -The painting features six female figures and two male, along with a cupid, in an orange grove. The movement of the composition is from right to left, so following that direction the standard identification of the figures is: at far right "Zephyrus, the biting wind of March, kidnaps and possesses the nymph Chloris, whom he later marries and transforms into a deity; she becomes the goddess of Spring, eternal bearer of life, and is scattering roses on the ground." Chloris the nymph overlaps Flora, the goddess she transforms into.
In the centre (but not exactly so) and somewhat set back from the other figures stands Venus, a red-draped woman in blue. Like the flower-gatherer, she returns the viewer's gaze. The trees behind her form a broken arch to draw the eye. In the air above her a blindfolded Cupid aims his bow to the left. On the left of the painting the Three Graces, a group of three females also in diaphanous white, join hands in a dance. At the extreme left Mercury, clothed in red with a sword and a helmet, raises his caduceus or wooden rod towards some wispy gray clouds
Turkey 1983 ruins of Aphrodite temple Aphrodisias
Cyprus 1976 Priest of Aphrodite 5th cent. B.C. a statue of limestone
Sanctuary of Aphrodite Aphrodisias , western anatolia - The site was a local cult center centered around a local fertility goddess since at least the 7th century BC. In the hellenistic period, the local goddess came to be identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite, in a similar manner as the Artemis of Ephesus was originally a local goddess who came to be identified with Artemis, and the city became a pilgrimage for people from across Anatolia and the Aegean sea.
From Olympus, Jupiter takes notice of the carnage in Italy. He had expected the Trojans to settle there peacefully, and he summons a council of all the gods to discuss the matter. There, Venus blames Juno for the continued suffering of Aeneas and the Trojans. Juno angrily responds that she did not force Aeneas to go to Italy. Annoyed at their bickering, Jupiter decrees that henceforth he will not help either side, so that the merits and efforts of men will decide their ends.
Paraguay 1987 Venus at the Assembly of the olympian Gods by Rubens 1602
Honduras 2000 Picture of Aphrodite by Pablo Zelaya Sierra 1896 – 1933
Greece 1984 Hestia Dione and Aphrodite
Marble sculpture of Parthenon east pediment
438-432 BCE. (British Museum, London)
Czech Republic 2014 Assembly of the olympian Gods by Rubens 1602 - Venus on the right.
Czechoslovakia 1988 Bacchus and Ariadne by Sebastiano Ricci 1725 - Venus is high above.
Paraguay 1976 Uranus and Aphrodite by A. Medina