A marble statue of Venus standing on a rectangular base with peplos robe off the right shoulder, left hand holding the hem of the robe and right hand cradling the shoulder of Cupid(?), standing with wing folded to the rear wearing a simple draped garment.

PROVENANCE:
The property of a German gentleman; acquired 1980s-early 1990s.

FOOTNOTES:
This statue is a Roman copy of a Greek original dating to the late Classical period, as can be seen in the rendering of the robes and facial features, as well as the pairing of figures which became popular a this time. It most likely represents a cult image from an important shrine which is indicated by the long robes of the goddess which emphasise her regal, heavenly and motherly aspects. A similar statue to this one was found in an aristocratic tomb at Soloi, Northern Cyprus, and dating to the fourth century BC.
The Roman goddess Venus was strongly influenced by the much older Greek Aphrodite and the Etruscan Turan. Venus was more than just the goddess of love and sex and had functions that covered the fertility and protection of crops, as well as being the mother of the Roman people and protector of significant politicians, such as Julius Caesar. Both Venus, and her Greek equivalent, Aphrodite, are called 'the Heavenly One' and have their prototypes in the goddesses of Mesopotamia, such as Inana and Ishtar, goddesses of war, sex and fertility, as well as the more motherly figures of Hathor and Isis of Egypt. Many of the principal shrines of Aphrodite are found in the Greek East, such as the city of Aphrodisias in Caria, modern day Turkey, where she is depicted as an ancient Anatolian deity similar to Ephesian Artemis.
Her most famous centre of worship was at Paphos on the island of Cyprus, which can be traced back to the Bronze Age and remained the the main centre for her worship in the Mediterranean until the fourth century AD. It was here that the goddess was worshipped in the form of a conical stone, most probably a meteorite. Most scholars now accept that Aphrodite descended from a Western Asiatic divinity who was later Hellenised. Cyprus provided the link between the Near East and the Aegean world, where the presence of Greeks, Levantines and Egyptians transformed the nature and worship of the goddess. In the fourth and third centuries BC the goddess is sometimes shown wearing heavily ornamented garb in a style that expresses an Eastern taste for rich ornaments. Because of her long association with fertility, she never ceased to be the Kourotrophos, or nursing goddess, the patroness of young children, and was often represented with an infant who was identified with Eros.
Eros was not the only child of Aphrodite, though he was the most popular and well represented. The other children of the goddess include Hermaphroditus, whose father was Hermes, and Priapus, whose father was Dionysus. Statistically there are far more representations of Eros than any of Aphrodite's other children, which may be explained by the fact that his youth and charm appealed to a wider audience.There are relatively few written sources to the origin of Eros. The only mythological account of his birth is found in Plato's Symposium, where we learn that he was conceived by two lesser deities, Poros (plenty) and Penia (poverty) at the feast celebrating the birth of Aphrodite. Other sources suggest Hermes, Ares or Zeus as his father, whilst some proclaim him as the first of all the gods and was a primeval creator.