ABSTRACT
The project of re-evaluating ancient art from a feminist perspective can have no better starting place than Praxiteles’ Knidian Aphrodite.1 This important sculpture, produced in the mid fourth century BCE, stands as the very first monumental female cult statue to be represented completely nude. Moreover, and not coincidentally, it is the first monumental female nude sculpture to be positioned with her hand over her pubis, a condition assigned the highly interpretive label pudica or so-called modest pose (Fig. 44). Literature, dating from antiquity to the present day, has hailed the Knidia as “the most popular of all statues in antiquity,” emphasizing its enormous influence on Western art from its own time to ours.2 The Knidian Aphrodite’s popularity was expressed not only in the accolades of ancient writers, but more significantly in the countless sculpted copies, adaptations, and derivations inspired by Praxiteles’ concept.3 This sculpture continued and continues to spawn a massive number of works in the Western tradition representing female nudes fashioned as covering their pubis. In fact, Praxiteles’ Aphrodite stands at the head of a long, labored list of canonical works from every period of European and American art from its appearance to our present day including examples in the art of Botticelli, Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Greuze, Canova, Manet, Renoir, Picasso, Valadon, Matisse . . . the list is endless.
