Aphrodite, later known as Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, sex, fertility, and prosperity. Yet, it is her representation of beauty that she is most well known for. Painters and sculptors have personified her, embodied her and epitomized her. The way Venus has been represented has changed with the current fashion of the time in which she was depicted. In contemporary society, a woman’s looks, her body type and how she presents herself are all scrutinized by the media. A woman’s figure and appearance has been assessed, altered, and contorted for idealized beauty throughout time, starting in ancient Greece. The idealized form of beauty has shifted from the medieval depictions of naked women, to the full figures of Rubens and then back to a slimmer figure as time progressed. Throughout the artistic movements of known history, the female form has been a central theme to recreate through painting and sculpture. The following works are representations of the female form throughout history in the depiction of Venus.
