Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Aphrodite.
The gallery
The Birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli, c. 1484–1486
A celebrated Renaissance tempera painting showing the goddess of love arriving at the shore fully grown, borne on a scallop shell by the breath of the wind gods while a waiting Hora extends a flowered cloak. One of the most iconic images of Aphrodite ever made, it is housed in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Venus de Milo
Alexandros of Antioch, c. 150–125 BC
A Hellenistic marble statue generally identified as Aphrodite, discovered on the island of Melos in 1820. Renowned for its serene beauty and famously missing arms, it has become one of the defining images of the goddess and of classical sculpture itself. It is displayed at the Louvre, Paris.
Venus of Urbino
Titian, 1534
An oil painting of Venus reclining nude on a couch in a Venetian palace interior, her gaze meeting the viewer's with calm directness. Titian brings the goddess of love out of myth and into an intimate domestic setting, in an image that shaped centuries of reclining nudes. It hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
The Birth of Venus
Alexandre Cabanel, 1863
An academic oil painting of Venus newly born from the sea, reclining on the crest of a wave beneath a flight of putti. A sensation at the Paris Salon of 1863, where it was purchased by Napoleon III, it epitomizes the polished mythological nude of its era. It is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
On screen
Troy: Fall of a City
Owen Harris
The BBC/Netflix Trojan cycle keeps Aphrodite in the Judgement that starts the war — the golden apple, the bribe of Helen, and the goddess whose vanity lights the pyre of Troy.
Clash of the Titans
Desmond Davis
Harryhausen's Olympus keeps Aphrodite among the gods who watch Perseus' quest — love's goddess as one voice in the divine gallery above the Kraken.
Hercules
Ron Clements & John Musker
Disney's Aphrodite is the blonde Olympian of romance — a cameo goddess in the pantheon that frames Hercules' rise from zero to hero.
Blood of Zeus
Netflix's myth cycle brings Aphrodite into the Olympian war — the goddess of love among the gods choosing sides as heaven burns.
In music & on stage
The Golden Apple
Jerome Moross
Broadway's through-sung Homer pastiche gives Aphrodite the winning argument in the angel-food bake-off for the golden apple — love, as ever, taking the prize.
Venus and Adonis
John Blow
Blow's court masque for Charles II is the earliest surviving English opera — Venus' love for the doomed huntsman sung as baroque pastoral tragedy.
Tannhäuser
Richard Wagner
Wagner's Venusberg opens on the goddess of love holding the minstrel in her mountain court — Aphrodite as Venus, the sensual temptation against which the opera's pilgrimage turns.
Il pomo d'oro
Antonio Cesti
Cesti's Viennese extravaganza restages the Judgment of Paris: Venus wins the golden apple, and Aphrodite's prize becomes the engine of a fifty-scene baroque machine.
In play
Hades
Supergiant Games
Aphrodite's boons in Supergiant's underworld run are charm and weak-point strike — the goddess of love as a build that makes enemies fall for you, then fall.
Hades II
Supergiant Games
She returns among the Olympian boon-givers in the sequel: the same velvet voice, now arming Melinoë's hunt for Chronos.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians
Rick Riordan
Riordan's Aphrodite is the goddess of love as mall-glamour and heartbreak — mother of Piper later, and the Olympian who judges demigods by their dating lives.
God of War III
Santa Monica Studio
Aphrodite appears in the chambers of Olympus as Kratos storms the gods — the goddess of love as a sensual waypoint in the Spartan's war on Zeus.