A new temporary exhibition at the acclaimed Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK, is focusing on Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty.
“Aphrodite – The making of a goddess”, running through April 11, 2027, launched this month to explore “one of the ancient world’s most enduring cultural icons.”
Bringing together archaeology, sculpture, painting, contemporary art and fashion, and combining exceptional loans from across Europe and North America alongside objects from the Museum’s own collections, the exhibition traces Aphrodite’s journey and transformations from her earliest origins in the eastern Mediterranean, through the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, via Renaissance Europe, to the continuing fascination with her today.
Loans from Cyprus and the Louvre highlight 5,000 years of Aphrodite’s history
Among the highlights of the exhibition are iconic ancient sculptures such as the Crouching Aphrodite (c. 199 CE) from the Royal Collection and a Capitoline Venus (c. 160 CE) on loan from the Louvre; Botticelli’s Venus (c. 1490) from the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; modern works by Yves Klein and Michelangelo Pistoletto; and Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe dress, worn by pop music superstar Beyoncé.
A recreation of an Aphrodite sanctuary using exceptional loans from Cyprus – where the goddess emerged from the sea, according to myth – and major international collections will show how Aphrodite was worshipped as the all-powerful goddess across the island and the surprising ways she was depicted in ancient Cypriot art.
“We are deeply grateful to the many institutions and colleagues who have helped make this exhibition possible, particularly the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, whose support has been invaluable,” says Dr Xa Sturgis CBE, Director of the Ashmolean.
“The exhibition traces more than 5,000 years of history, offering an exciting perspective on Aphrodite,” he notes.
Aphrodite’s mythical birthplace of Cyprus
The story of Aphrodite, one of the 12 gods and goddesses of Olympus, according to ancient Greek mythology, begins in Cyprus, the island where she emerged as a goddess and where visitors and immigrants from the Greek Aegean first encountered her.
From these origins grew the myths that made Aphrodite famous, told and retold by the great writers of the ancient world, including Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Ovid and Virgil, the Ashmolean Museum notes.
“They recounted her birth from the sea, her role in the Judgement of Paris that led to the Trojan War, her love affairs with the beautiful Adonis, and with Anchises, the father of her son Aeneas, the Trojan War hero whose descendants founded Rome.”
The exhibition explores these myths with ancient vases, sculpture, jewellery, and other spectacular antiquities like the Louvre’s mosaic from Tunisia (200–250 CE) showing Aphrodite sailing on a barge.
The exhibition’s curator, Dr Anja Ulbrich, a leading expert on Cypriot archaeology and female deities of Cyprus, has spent much of her career exploring the island’s ancient culture, religious traditions and Mediterranean connections.
Aphrodite has been at the centre of her work, she says, and “The making of a goddess” was designed “to tell the remarkable story of how a goddess worshipped in ancient Cyprus became one of the most enduring and recognisable figures in human history.”
Evolution of female deities in the Eastern Mediterranean
From world-famous myths surrounding Aphrodite, the exhibition goes on to explore the cult of the goddess in ancient Cyprus and how she evolved from a much older tradition of female deities worshipped across the eastern Mediterranean, including Astarte and Ishtar.
This evolution followed centuries of cultural exchange linking Cyprus with the Near East, Egypt and the Greek world.
Visitors will see the earliest known representation of Aphrodite – a unique copper alloy figurine from the Ashmolean’s collection dating to around 1200 BCE – one of the oldest objects in the exhibition.
As Greek influence spread across the Mediterranean and Rome rose to power, Aphrodite was transformed into Venus, becoming an important Roman deity and a symbol of imperial identity.
Rediscovered during the Renaissance, ancient sculptures of Venus inspired generations of artists, collectors and rulers. Most famous among them was the Venus de’ Medici, unearthed in a vineyard in Rome in the 1530s. The exhibition includes the first full-scale bronze cast of the original Venus de’ Medici, commissioned for Blenheim Palace by the 1st Duke of Marlborough in 1711.
In the modern world, contemporary visions of Aphrodite include Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Venus of the Rags (1967, 1974) and Yves Klein’s signature blue reinterpretation of the Venus de’ Medici (1982).
The goddess also appears in contemporary fashion through Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe dress redesigned for Beyoncé’s 2023 Renaissance world tour, which reimagined Venus for a 21st-century audience.
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