Antiquity · Cleveland Museum of Art · 1926.53
Head of Aphrodite
Unknown maker, c. 100–200 CE
Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of J. H. Wade · Public domain
- Artist
- Unknown maker
- Date
- c. 100–200 CE
- Medium
- marble
- Dimensions
- Overall: 30.3 cm (11 15/16 in.)
- Era
- Antiquity
Why it matters
With idealized features including a straight nose, small mouth with thick lips, and a hairstyle best known from the so-called Capitoline Venus (now in Rome), this head likely belonged to a full-scale statue of the goddess of love. Like the Capitoline Venus and many other sculptures of the Roman period, it probably showed the goddess nude and bathing, harking back to the groundbreaking sculpture of Aphrodite at Knidos, carved by Praxiteles in the mid-fourth century BCE.