Foam Aphrodite. Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, born from sea foam

Aphrodite, Greek, Latin Venus is the goddess of love and beauty, the most beautiful of the goddesses of ancient myths.

Its origin is not entirely clear. According to Homer, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and the rain goddess Dione; according to Hesiod, Aphrodite was born from sea ​​foam, fertilized by the sky god Uranus, and emerged from the sea on the island of Cyprus (hence one of her nicknames: Cyprida).

One way or another, but in any case, thanks to her beauty and all sorts of charms, Aphrodite became one of the most powerful goddesses, before which neither gods nor people could resist.

In addition, she had a whole detachment of helpers and assistants: the goddesses of female charm and beauty - the haritas, the goddesses of the seasons - the mountains, the goddess of persuasion (and flattery) Peyto, the god of passionate attraction Himer, the god of love attraction Pot, the god of marriage Hymen and the young god love Eros, from whose arrows there is no escape.

Since love plays a huge role in the lives of gods and people, Aphrodite has always been in high esteem. Those who showed respect for her and did not skimp on sacrifices could count on her goodwill. True, she was a rather fickle deity, and the happiness she bestowed was often fleeting. Sometimes she made genuine miracles that only love can do. For example, the Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion was revived by Aphrodite marble statue the woman he fell in love with. Aphrodite protected her favorites wherever she could, but she also knew how to hate, because hatred is the sister of love. So, the timid young man Narcissus, to whom the jealous nymphs reported that he neglects their charms, Aphrodite made him fall in love with himself and take his own life.

Oddly enough, Aphrodite herself was not very lucky in love, since she did not manage to keep any of her lovers; She was not happy in marriage either. Zeus gave her the most unprepossessing of all gods, the lame, always sweaty blacksmith god Hephaestus, as her husband. To console herself, Aphrodite became close to the god of war Ares and bore him five children: Eros, Anteroth, Deimos, Phobos and Harmony, then with the god of wine Dionysus (she gave birth to his son Priapus), and also, among others, with the god of trade Hermes. She even consoled herself with a mere mortal, the Dardanian king Anchises, from whom Aeneas was born to her.

In the world of myths, life has always been rich in events, and Aphrodite often took the most active part in them; but her benevolence towards the Trojan prince Paris had the most far-reaching consequences. In gratitude for the fact that Paris called Aphrodite more beautiful than Hera and Athena, she promised him the most beautiful of mortal women as his wife. She turned out to be Helen - the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, and Aphrodite helped Paris kidnap her and take her to Troy. Thus began the Trojan War, which you can read about in the articles Menelaus, Agamemnon and many others. Naturally, in this story, Aphrodite helped the Trojans, but the war was not her part. For example, as soon as she was scratched by the spear of the Achaean leader Diomedes, she ran away crying from the battlefield. As a result of a ten-year war, in which all the heroes of that time and almost all the gods participated, Paris died, and Troy was wiped off the face of the earth.

Aphrodite was clearly a goddess of Asia Minor origin and, apparently, goes back to the Phoenician-Syrian goddess Astarte, and she, in turn, to the Assyrian-Babylonian goddess of love Ishtar. The Greeks adopted this cult already in ancient times, most likely through the islands of Cyprus and Cythera, where Aphrodite was worshiped especially zealously. Hence such nicknames of the goddess as Cyprida, Paphia, the Paphos goddess - from the city of Paphos in Cyprus, where there was one of the most magnificent temples of Aphrodite (see also the article "Pygmalion"), from Cythera (Cythera) - Kythera. Myrtle, rose, apple, poppy, doves, dolphin, swallow and linden were dedicated to her, as well as many magnificent temples - not only in Paphos, but also in Knida, Corinth, Alabanda, on the island of Kos and in other places. From Greek colonies V Southern Italy her cult spread to Rome, where she was identified with the ancient Italic goddess of spring, Venus. The largest of the Roman temples of Aphrodite-Venus were the temples at the Forum of Caesar (the temple of Venus the Ancestor) and at the Via Sacre ( sacred road) to the Roman Forum (temple of Venus and Roma). The cult of Aphrodite fell into decline only after the victory of Christianity. However, thanks to poets, sculptors, artists and astronomers, her name has survived to this day.

Beauty and love attract artists of all times, so Aphrodite was depicted, perhaps, more often than all other characters of ancient myths, including in vase paintings, frescoes of Pompeii; unfortunately, about the fresco "Aphrodite emerging from the waves", created in the end. 4th c. BC e. Apelles for the temple of Asclepius on Kos, we know only from the words of ancient authors who call it "unsurpassed". The most famous of the reliefs is the so-called Aphrodite of Ludovisi, a Greek work of the 460s. BC e. (Rome, National Museum in Thermae).

The statues of Aphrodite are among the masterpieces of ancient plastic art. This is primarily "Aphrodite of Cnidus", created, probably by Praxiteles for the Cnidus temple in the 350s. BC e. (copies of it are in the Vatican Museums, in the Louvre in Paris, in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and in other collections), "Aphrodite of Cyrene" - a Roman copy of a Hellenistic statue of the 2-1 centuries. BC e. (Rome, National Museum at Thermae), "Capitolian Aphrodite" - a Roman copy of a Hellenistic statue of ser. 3 in. BC e. (Rome, Capitoline Museums), "Venus of Medicea" - a Roman copy of the statue of Cleomenes of the 2nd century. BC e. (Uffizi Gallery, Florence) and others. The finds of several Greek statues, which ancient authors do not mention at all, testify to the highest level of skill of Greek sculptors who sculpted Aphrodite, for example, “Aphrodite from Sol” (2nd century BC, Cyprus Museum in Nicosia) or the famous "Aphrodite of Melos" (late 2nd century BC, found in 1820, Paris, Louvre).

Artists of the new time were fond of Aphrodite no less than ancient ones: their paintings and sculptures are almost impossible to count. Among the most famous paintings are: "The Birth of Venus" and "Venus and Mars" by Botticelli (1483-1484 and 1483, Florence, Uffizi Gallery, and London, National Gallery), "Sleeping Venus" by Giorgione, completed after 1510 by Titian ( Dresden Gallery), Venus and Cupid by Cranach the Elder (c. 1526, Rome, Villa Borghese), Venus and Cupid by Palms the Elder (1517, Bucharest, National Gallery), Sleeping Venus and Venus and the Lute Player (Dresden gallery), The Birth of Venus, Triumph of Venus and Venus and Mars by Rubens (London, National Gallery, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Genoa, Palazzo Bianco), Sleeping Venus by Reni (after 1605) and Poussin (1630, both paintings in the Dresden Gallery), Venus with a Mirror by Velázquez (c. 1657, London, National Gallery), Boucher's Toilet of Venus and Venus Comforting Cupid (1746, Stockholm, National Museum, and 1751 , Washington, National Gallery). Of contemporary works, we can name at least “Aphrodite” by R. Dufy (c. 1930, Prague, National Gallery), “Venus with a Lantern” by Pavlovich-Barilli (1938, Belgrade, Museum of Modern Art), “Sleeping Venus” by Delvaux (1944, London , National Gallery) and the engraving "The Birth of Venus" by M. Shvabinsky (1930).

From the field of plastics it is necessary to mention at least G.R. Paolina Borghese as Venus" (1807, Rome, Villa Borghese), "Aphrodite" by B. Thorvaldsen (c. 1835, Copenhagen, Thorvaldsen Museum), "Venus the Victorious" by O. Renoir (1914), "Venus with a Pearl Necklace" A. Maillol (1918, in the London Tate Gallery), "Venus" by M. Marini (1940, USA, private collection). In the collection of the Prague National Gallery- “Venus” by Khoreyts (1914) and “Venus of Fertile Fields” by Obrovsky (1930); the sculpture "Venus emerging from the waves" was created in 1930 by V. Makovsky. In this regard, it is interesting to note that famous statue JV Myslbek "Music" (1892-1912) is a creative reworking of an antique sample. As it turned out from his creative heritage, he created it on the basis of a thorough study of the Venus of the Esquiline (1st century BC). Of course, composers also sang Aphrodite. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Vranitsky wrote the program symphony "Aphrodite", at the beginning of the 20th century. the orchestral "Hymn to Venus" was created by Manyar, Orff wrote in 1950-1951. stage concert "Triumph of Aphrodite".

Of the many poetic works dedicated to Aphrodite, the oldest, apparently, are the three "Hymns to Aphrodite", which tradition ascribes to Homer. In poetry, Aphrodite is often referred to as Cythera (Kythera), the Queen of Paphos, Paphia:

"Run, hide from the eyes,
Cythera is a weak queen! .. "
- A. S. Pushkin, "Liberty" (1817);

"At the Paphos queen
Let's ask for a fresh wreath ... "
- A. S. Pushkin, "Krivtsov" (1817);

“As a faithful son of the pathos faith…”
- A. S. Pushkin, "To Shcherbinin" (1819). Here the pathos faith is love.

Suddenly, the son stretched out his left hand from an ambush, and with his right, grabbing a huge sharp-toothed sickle, he quickly cut off the childbearing member from the dear parent, and threw it back with a strong swing ... The member was worn over the sea for a long time; and white foam whirled around from the imperishable member. And the girl in the foam was born in that ... (c)

Despite the story of conception, which is so exciting for the heart of every feminist, in depicting the plot of the birth of Aphrodite, the artists - which is quite natural - preferred to write another moment: the appearance of a completely naked goddess from sea ​​waves, with drops running down her body, strands of long hair stuck to her chest, and so on.

And here I will probably surprise you - the plot of this nude has not lost popularity for two and a half thousand years. Aphrodite Anadyomene- this epithet means "surfacing out of the sea", will come out from under the brushes of the court painter Alexander the Great, as well as the favorite painter of Napoleon III, and - Pablo Picasso. Each, of course, in their own way. And there will be a lot of them:

CREATOR It is believed that the idea of ​​Aphrodite Anadyomene came to one of the greatest artists of antiquity - Apelles. He was the court master of Alexander of Macendon, and he wrote it so well that the king, they say, exclaimed: "From now on, no one will paint my portraits except you!". You can understand the feelings of the model - for example, for the city of Ephesus, the artist painted him sitting on a throne in the form of Zeus and holding a beam of lightning in his hands. True, before becoming a permanent painter of the court, Apelles had to work hard - the king did not like the first portrait of Alexander. But when Bucephalus, the commander's faithful stallion, was brought to the picture, the horse neighed joyfully at the sight of his beloved face. "O king, Master chuckled. your horse turned out to be a better connoisseur of painting than you."
This is how interviews should be.

Behind "Alexander the Thunderer" he was already paid 20 talents of gold.
Unfortunately, almost the entire history of ancient painting consists of such tales - after all, nothing has been preserved from the paintings. (Something is known, however, from Roman copies).

By creating your "Aphrodite Anadyomene", Apelles became a pioneer. The image of a naked female body in those days, 4th c. BC, was bold enough - remember Praxiteles, who, sculpting a naked "Aphrodite of Knidos" from hetaera Phryne, had to justify himself before the Athenian court; in addition, the shocked customers did not accept the statue (customers are always scoundrels) and he had to fuse it to others. How things were with painting is not very clear - nevertheless, Apelles' painting immediately became a landmark and caused many imitations.

What exactly was depicted on it is unclear, the old gossip Pliny the Elder in his "natural history" more space devoted to stories about her movements and price. It is believed that the fresco "Birth of Venus" from Pompeii may be a copy of Apelles, but this is only an assumption that is not very compatible with the words of the sources. And they describe it like this: newborn goddess, emerging from the waves, wringing out her hair.

EUREKA The idea to depict Aphrodite in this way came to Apelles, as they say, all of a sudden: he was inspired by the already mentioned hetaera Phryne, the model of Praxiteles. Phryne was very smart, beautiful, and earned a lot of money - for example, after the king of Lydia spent the night with her, he had to raise taxes in his native country to make up for the budget deficit. With all this, she was bashful: it was almost impossible to see her naked. public baths she did not visit, dressed in tight, not transparent clothes, covered her hair, hid her wrists, and she preferred to receive men alone in the dark. (My version - she just kept her exclusivity).

At the sight of Phryne emerging from the waves of the bay back to land, Apelles was inspired and he came up with an image "Aphrodite Anadyomene". Some say that Phryne posed for him for this picture, just as she posed for the sculpture of Praxiteles. Others mention the name of Campaspa - the former mistress of Alexander the Great. According to legend, the king once asked the artist to paint her naked. In the process of posing, Apelles was so imbued with her beauty that he fell in love with her without memory. Alexander presented his concubine to the master, thus demonstrating his nobility (and his characteristic coolness in relations with women).

The painting went to Asklepion - the temple of the god Asclepius on the island of Kos, where she was for several centuries. The fate of the canvas with the beginning of the Roman Empire was not very happy: at the turn of our era, Emperor Augustus took it, however, forgiving the inhabitants of the island in return for taxes in the amount of 100 talents. He placed it in Rome, in the temple of Julius Caesar. By this time, the picture was already damaged in the lower part, but no one undertook to restore it. And the emperor Nero, a well-known perfectionist, replaced the dying work with one of the works of a certain master Dorothea. Since then, no one knows what was there. But many offer their own interpretations.

ATTRIBUTES Let's talk about the paraphernalia that accompanied the newborn goddess in her images. The most symbolically filled in this sense is the painting by Sandro Botticelli "Birth of Venus", who extremely carefully studied all the ancient evidence available to him.

Certainly in "Birth of Venus" the sea must be present (remember that it was he who was fertilized by the cut off genitals of Uranus, that is, it acted as if a mother. No wonder in the late version of the myth Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus, the supreme god of the next generation, precisely from oceanides Dione). There are marine attributes - dolphins, fish, nereid nymphs. The goddess on the shore is met by her maids - ora and charites, and the winds hospitably blow. Flowers bloom underfoot. Sometimes her usual companions are present - cupids and cupids.

And the two main signs of Aphrodite Anadyomene are the shell on which Aphrodite sailed from the island of Cythera (where she appeared) to the island of Cyprus (where she landed); as well as strands of wet hair, which the goddess squeezes from the sea foam.

The same details, only not so rigidly structured, we see in the paintings of the masters and later times. For example, at the birth of the goddess, the academician Bouguereau has a huge number of people - some kind of centaurs, tritons, at least a dozen cupids, a black dolphin, and so on. Bush is more intimate - his Venus reclines either on a blue satin, or on the waves, and only the fish, staring with a big eye, gives a more obvious hint at the plot of the picture. Unlike Botticelli's painting, where the shell under the feet of Venus is the compositional focus of the picture, Boucher does not have it, and Bouguereau loses it.

SHELL As advanced art historians and culturologists unappetizingly explain, the sea shell in ancient world was the symbol of the vulva. This is not strange - we find the same situation with the Hindus with their yoni. There is no mention that a shell was present in the Apelles painting. Nevertheless, Botticelli did not abandon this attribute, probably relying on the many small ones available to him. archaeological artifacts. The sea mollusk can either be depicted directly, or be indicated with the help of folds of clothing, as we see it on the statue. "Venus of Syracuse".

In the diagram - an example of a yoni: the image of the goddess of Wisdom, used for visualization by tantrists from the Tibetan Kagyudpa sect (or something like that). The energy emanating from the yoni of the goddess forms the leaf of the bodhi tree, under which the Buddha experienced enlightenment. This picture expresses the elemental nature of erotic energy.

She wrote, put up pictures - and she herself became scared.
A heartbreaking thing - these Freudian symbols of yours in the collective primitive unconscious, especially migrate to our modern culture.

HAIR Much calmer is the situation with the gesture of hands squeezing out wet hair - its task is clearly purely aesthetic plus contextual. This path was followed by such masters as Titian, Rubens, Ingres and others. (At Botticelli, the goddess just easily holds a long curl, covering her bosom with it).

Most of the ancient interpretations of the plot of Anadyomena are precisely sculptural. At the same time, raising her hands, she seems to become a female version Diadumen("young man tying a victory armband"). A significant number of variations of this particular pose is further evidence that the Pompeian fresco with the reclining goddess is unlikely to be very similar to the original Apelles, because, as you know, he served as a model for many repetitions.

NEW WORLD By mid. 19th century this plot is very confusing. Countless polished canvases came out of the workshops of academicians. They can be understood - demand gave rise to supply, and what other plot could give such a good justification for the image of a naked woman in the bashful era of Sherlock Holmes, if not Venus or some kind of odalisques? The lack of nudity in the aesthetic treasury of every real man, which today is made up by means of magazines, photographs and the Internet, was difficult to compensate in an age when inventors had only reached daguerreotypes in any other way.

Nevertheless, decency had to be observed in the depiction of nudity. 1863: Queen Victoria is 44, we have just abolished serfdom and Bazarov began to cut frogs; in the States, Scarlett reconciles the green hat. Painting nude.

Left - "bad" example, right - "good":

Alexandre Cabanel, salon artist, paints his "Birth of Venus" and exhibits it at the Paris Salon of 1863. The painting became an incredible success. In addition to its inherent artistic merits, critics praised the composition itself - the fact is that Cabanel, when creating it, relied on the very Pompeian fresco with the reclining Venus, which had just been discovered in those years. The flow of praise became even more intense when Emperor Napoleon III purchased the painting for his personal collection. An example of what happened to an artist if he did not hide behind antique themes is a painting by Manet "Olympia". He creates it in the same year, inspired, as they say, by the success of the Kabanel nude. But he draws a real Parisian on it, calls the work after a prostitute, and in addition, experiments with the style of painting. And what? - Directorate of the Paris Salon of 1864, where he exhibited "Olympia", you have to put two guards in front of her so that the audience does not spit and do not poke her with umbrellas.

I remember a few years ago, when Yair Lapid was still entertaining, not news, his program included a joke of humor from one of the noteworthy wits of Israeli TV.

The joke was about what is the most beautiful and the most disgusting.
The most beautiful thing is imagine: a clear sky, a blue sea, a cheerful sun, gorgeous beach, and a completely naked Pamela Anderson emerges from the water. And sea moisture, and foam falls from her bodies ...

And the most disgusting (ahi magil)? The same thing: the sea, the sky, the sun, the beach, but it comes out of the water ... then followed the name of the most famous Russian-speaking member of the Knesset.

The joke itself is MAGILE, but... that's not the point.

The beautiful nude coming out of the water is one of the most ancient archetypes. No wonder Aphrodite was called foam-born - Αφροδίτη Αναδυομένη .

Name options: Aphrodite Anadyomene, Venus Anadyomene, Birth of Venus, Venus Marina.

Very interesting is the myth cited by Hesiod about the appearance of the goddess of love from the blood and sperm of castrated Uranus, which fell into the sea.

Leading the night, Uranus appeared, and he lay down
Around Gaia, burning with love desire, and everywhere
Spread around. Suddenly left hand
The son stretched out from the ambush, and with his right, grabbing a huge
A sharp-toothed sickle, cut off a cute parent quickly
Member of the childbearing and threw back his strong swing.
And not fruitlessly from the Crown hands he flew mighty:
No matter how many drops of blood spilled onto the ground from a member,
All their land accepted. And when the years turned
She gave birth to powerful Erinnias and great Giants
With long spears in mighty hands, in shining armor,
Also the nymphs that we call Melias on earth.
The father's penis, cut off with a sharp iron,
It was worn by the sea for a long time, and the white foam
Whipped around from the imperishable member. And the girl in the foam
In that one was born ... "
Hesiod, Theogony

Aphrodite Anadyomene - "surfacing, emerging from the sea" - the most popular constant epithet of the goddess and her most famous incarnation. This is an image visual arts starting with the famous but not preserved painting of Apelles, repeated many times by the masters of subsequent eras.

The most famous depiction of the birth of Anadyomene is a painting by the Italian painter of the Tuscan school, Sandro Botticelli.

"Sandro Botticelli "The Birth of Venus""

It is believed that the model for Venus was Simonetta Vespucci, the beloved of Giuliano Medici, the younger brother of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo the Magnificent.

But this plot was popular before the Renaissance and much later.

One way or another, but the fact that the most beautiful can come out of the water in the foam of the sea is known. And the worst thing too: where all sorts of reptiles, monsters, etc. come from. in myths...

There may be a combination ... There, to see the beautiful in the ugly, as the French decadents could do. Here Rimbaud has such a poem “Venus Anadyomene”, which, according to contemporaries, was a reaction to the ten-verses of François Coppé, who represented the ugliness of the century, according to Rimbaud, licked and the poems of Albert Glatigny, who was a wandering comedian and died young from consumption.

In this poem, which in the opinion of many became a turning point in aesthetics, Rimbo literally eradicates the "literary" ideas about the beautiful and desirable, and the decadent Venus, reduced to the caricature image of a prostitute, becomes the object of love desire. And at the same time, there is a frank evidence of the monstrous beauty rising from the old bath, a very wretched, very cheap prostitute.

Venus Anadyomene

Comme d'un cercueil vert en fer blanc, une tête
De femme a cheveux bruns fortement pommadés
D'une vieille baignoire émerge, lente et bête,
Avec des deficits assez mal ravaudés;

Puis le col gras et gris, les larges omoplates
Qui sailent; le dos court qui rentre et qui ressort;
Puis les rondeurs des reins semblent prendre l'essor;
La graisse sous la peau paraît en feuilles plates:

L'échine est un peu rouge, et le tout sent un goût
Horrible étrangement; on remarque surtout
Des singularités qu’il faut voir à la loupe…

Les reins portent deux mots gravés: CLARA VENUS;
-Et tout ce corps remue et tend sa large croupe
Belle hideusement d'un ulcère à l'anus.