Head of Aphrodite

AD 100–200

Head of Aphrodite, AD 100–200. Italy, Roman, 2nd Century. Marble; overall: 30.3 cm (11 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of J. H. Wade 1926.53 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. The elaborate hairstyle, arranged in a bow atop the head, identifies this figure as Aphrodite.