Venus - The Goddess of Love in Art by Dr Gail-Nina Anderson

Aphrodite in ancient Greece, Venus in the civilisation of Rome, the goddess of love is the most enduring of the pagan Olympian deities, still a popular point of reference for female beauty and sexual appeal.

Aphrodite in ancient Greece, Venus in the civilisation of Rome, the goddess of love is the most enduring of the pagan Olympian deities, still a popular point of reference for female beauty and sexual appeal. In art her appearances vary to catch the taste of the times – indeed from Botticelli to Rubens, Titian to Burne-Jones, artists have painted her naked figure as their contemporary ideal of womanhood (and a great excuse to depict the nude, made artistically respectable by a few classical embellishments.) This talk charts her visual history from pre-classical goddess figures through the types and variations of Greek and Roman art, her spectacular reappearance in the Renaissance and her continuing popularity as a motif ever since. It also looks at the mythology and symbolism associated with the goddess, from the epic rivalry of The Judgement of Paris to the dark implications of the Venus and Adonis motif.

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