"Venus herself, as oft as she lays aside her robes, half stooping covers with her left hand her secret parts [pubem]."
Ovid, Ars Amatoria II.613
Here, in a contrapposto stance, the weight of the body has been shifted from the right leg to the left. In both statues the goddess looks in the same direction, the right hand covers the breasts, while the left, which in the Knidian Aphrodite held her drapery, now conceals the pubis. Although, in the gesture of the hands, the Capitoline Venus seems to emphasize her nudity rather than conceal it, there still is the same lack of self-consciousness and indifference to her audience.
"I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful, whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Cyprus. There the moist breath of the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam, and there the gold-filleted Hours welcomed her joyously. They clothed her with heavenly garments: on her head they put a fine, well-wrought crown of gold, and in her pierced ears they hung ornaments of orichalc [a highly prized copper alloy, perhaps brass] and precious gold, and adorned her with golden necklaces over her soft neck and snow-white breasts, jewels which the gold-filleted Hours wear themselves whenever they go to their father's house to join the lovely dances of the gods. And when they had fully decked her, they brought her to the gods, who welcomed her when they saw her, giving her their hands. Each one of them prayed that he might lead her home to be his wedded wife, so greatly were they amazed at the beauty of violet-crowned Cytherea."
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (VI.1)
The Knidia of Praxiteles was sculpted c. 360 BC but, in spite of its importance, there was a hiatus in the development of the archetype, and it is not until the late second century BC (150–100 BC) that imitations and variations of a more sensuous Aphrodite began to appear, as does the erotic love elegy as a new literary genre, in which the Latin poet is equally explicit in describing the beauty of his mistress. (Anecdotes about Praxiteles and Phrynę also begin to be told about this time, long after their supposed liaison. They probably are fictitious, as is much that was said of the courtesan.)
Originally hidden behind a wall, the sculpture was found between 1667 and 1670 near the basilica of San Vitale and donated to the Capitoline Museums (Palazzo Nuovo) by Benedict XIV.
