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The Female Body: Aphrodite of Cnidos

O n ancient evidence, praxiteles’ aphrodite of cnidos is widely thought to have been the first free-standing female nude, and, as such, she enters the art-historical canon as a site of aesthetic and erotic significance. The female nude comes to play an important role in classical art, and, within the classical tradition, she is to become so pervasive and instantly recognizable that she can be claimed as emblematic of art itself. And yet this Aphrodite was conceived as a cult statue. She thus possessed a religious significance in a context where sacred and secular, personal and political – and gendered – ways of viewing merge for the making of artistic meaning. Within the history of Western art, nudity and femininity come to be effectively equated, yet, as we have seen in the example of the Doryphoros, this was not always the case. In the sixth century BC it is the male body that is characteristically nude, while the kore, the female counterpart to the kouros, is heavily draped. In fifth-century sculpture, hints of the female body emerge beneath diaphanous drapery as specific enhancements of meaning. In the Centaur and Lapith metopes from the Parthenon (c. 440 BC: British Museum), the bare breasts of Lapith women struggling to escape from pursuing centaurs indicate the pathos and vulnerability of their plight. The slightly later ‘Sandal-Binder’ relief from the south balustrade of the Temple of Athena Nike (c. 420: Acropolis Museum, Athens) depicts the female personification of Victory bending to tie her sandal. Catenary loops of diaphanous drapery follow the outline of her form without showing the body itself. Her nudity is hinted at but not completely revealed, just as