Close your eyes and think of Venus. What image comes to mind? Perhaps Botticelli’s bored teenager in her scallop shell; maybe the Venus de Milo, serene, lovely and just a touch bovine; perhaps ...

A mix of ancient divinities, Aphrodite was patron over love, beauty, fertility, and war. But the venerated Greek deity has a more complex rise to fame than one might think. The birth of ...

Award-winning British historian Bettany Hughes traces the roots of the goddess Venus through ancient art, evocative myth and archaeological digs. She says, “Venus was never just a goddess of romantic ...

The statue is known as the Venus de' Medici. A figure of Cupid is riding on a dolphin at her feet. Cupid and the dolphin are both tiny by comparison, to give the impression of a giant goddess stepping ...

Two marble statues representing Aphrodite/Venus, the Greco-Roman goddess of love, were found recently at Petra, an ancient desert city in Jordan. The statues, which date to the second century A.D., ...

As the goddess of love, beauty and sexual pleasure, Aphrodite inspired cult worship and challenged artists to render her in suitably magnificent form. Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann / ...