Picturing Venus

The ancient Roman goddess Venus, known as Aphrodite in Greek, features prominently in Renaissance art as a symbol of female beauty. This In-Focus display, a collaboration with the University's History of Art department, presents new research examining the occurrence of Venus’s image in art and the myths associated with her.

?Picturing Venus features some of the most beautiful engravings from the Hunterian collection, including such masterpieces as Dürer’s Adam and Eve of 1504 and Marcantonio’s Judgement of Paris of c.1510. The selection also documents how the image of Venus was prized and used in the earliest art academies, in the form of plaster casts, drawings and, most effectively of all, engravings.

?At the centre of the display is a statue of Venus, on loan from The Glasgow School of Art, which demonstrates how plaster casts from the antique still promote the Renaissance notion explored in this display: that classical sculpture provides our ideal images of human beauty.