Head of Aphrodite
Unknown Artist
100–200 CE
Medium
marble
Dimensions
h. 30.3 cm
Classification
Sculpture
Department
Greek and Roman Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of J. H. Wade
Accession Number
1926.53
About this artwork
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 BC.